Iris Season (and observations about orthacheta bud fly at the end)

iris versicolor (not sure which SIGNA seedling)

iris brevicaulis, donated by a friend in Michigan

'Byakuya No Kuni' ( Hiroshi Shimizu by Carol Warner, R. 2005) 

'Labrador Hollow'- (Joseph Musacchia, R. 2017)

'Mama Janice' (Joseph Musacchia, R. 2019)

'Percy Viosca' (Patrick O'Connor, R. 2014)

'Annette Brown' (Harry Wolford, R. 2013).

'Brown Recluse' (Walter Moores, R. 2011)

first year bloom, species iris ensata, from seed from SIGNA.org

'Acadian Sky'- (Joseph Musacchia, R. 2017)

 

 The weather has transitioned from over a month of nearly daily rain (42 days in two months) to suddenly being humid and oppressively hot. Dangerous heat warnings started this weekend. Stepping out the door this morning, I was met with the same wall of hot/wet that I associate with getting off the plane in Miami. 

Part of that transition is the change in iris season: from Siberian iris season (with iris versicolor sprinkled in for flavor)... transitioning to Louisiana iris season (and also pseudata and pseudocorus irises). The thing about Louisiana irises is that they don't do anything small. They are BIG flowers! The color packs a punch! The leaves are huge. The rhizomes are big too! Knowing that they tend to be heavy feeders, I planted them directly into rough compost when we planted them out last summer. I expected we might see the occasional bloom here and there as this is their first season in this new space. Nope. They are ALL blooming! MJ Urist made sure we had the best plant material anyone could ask for. 

One thing we had been forewarned about was that Louisiana irises are favored by the dreaded iris borer. To try to avoid a major infestation, Leto and I sprayed the iris beds with beneficial nematodes back when the plants were about 3-4" tall (early in the season, right as the temps were about 45-50F at night). An expensive proposition, the use of beneficial nematodes makes me much happier than spraying a systemic insecticide.

Which leads me to this week's frustration:  the orthacheta bud fly

two orthacheta bud flies making MORE of the nasty maggots

 The orthacheta bud fly lays eggs on the flower bud, the maggot then burrows into the unopened flower. It eats the stigma and stamens (the female and male sex organs of the flower). When the flower opens, it looks like someone dissolved the inside of the flower. Not much left but frass and chewed tissue. At that point, if you remove the flower from the stalk, and slice into the flower vertically, you can usually find one or more maggots chewing their way down into the ovaries where they will eat all the seeds they can. They then pupate there and come out for another round at the end of the blooming season. 

So why is this an issue?

Since I intend to make crosses between different irises, I aim to beat the bees to their pollinating tasks. When I get to a newly flowering iris in the morning only to find everything inside chewed up, it is heartbreaking. Best case scenario, the next flower that opens will be free from bud fly... but not always. According to the literature, orthacheta bud fly goes for Siberian irises, LA irises and spuria irises. From our experience this summer, we can confirm those preferred choices. Unfortunately, one of my favorite spurias 'Sunny Day' has yet to form a normal bloom this year. Five blooms in and each one has been gnawed to bits by these nasty critters. 

I have resorted to pulling the flowers with any indication of infestation. I would rather not go the route of a systemic insecticide, but that might be unavoidable if this sort of thing continues in future years. If you've dealt with orthacheta bud fly and have seen positive results, I would love to know what you're doing.  



 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saying Goodbye to Frank

Image
  I lost a family friend last night. Frank Camps was a part of my life since I was a very young child. He was something between a godparent and an uncle. He came to nearly every birthday party I had in Miami. He and his son Frankie, and his wife Carmen came to every Thanksgiving and Christmas of my childhood. Frank was a chef. He cooked in more places than I could count. One of the places he cooked was a cafeteria for a pantyhose factory in Little Havana. He was a traditional Cuban cook, with a repertoire that ranged from plantains to Eye Round roast pork stuffed with carrots and ham. His black beans and rice changed my life. He taught me to love bread pudding and rice pudding. And without arroz con pollo, I probably would never have made it through college.  When I was probably five or six, he invited us over for Nocha Buena (a Christmas eve holiday, celebrated by Cubans with family and lots of food). Frank's feast involved a huge pig, roasted in the ground, lots of people...
Read more

Cold. January.

Image
  We're heading into the deep freeze next week. Life near zero is weird. I don't want to know the inside of my house this well. I can't really blame the cold though. I always get stir crazy after surgery. Something about surviving the surgical event makes me want to run off into the distance and just keep running. It might be escaping the hospital or being able to get up from the surgical table... I don't know. But once I am up and under my own power, I want OUT! This week I had a piece of skin cancer removed from below my eyelid. My face looks like I tried to hail a bus with my cheek. Not pretty. I thought going to a plastic surgeon would make me look cute. It said that in the brochure. And now it is wicked cold.  Years ago, we would relish time like this. Snow on the ground. No snowmobiles on the trail. Nights cold and black like ice. You can hear the trees creak. The snow is still fluffy, but after the weekend chill drops, I expect the snow to squeak. Warm sun over t...
Read more

Waking the Garden

Image
  hydrangea paniculata (not sure which variety) Walking through the garden this year, there are no bulbs up. Everything is still asleep. Last year was a very early spring after a very warm winter. We had iris reticulata blooming around this week. Not this year.  This year, all the plants have been asleep under thick blankets of snow. But there have also been plants that want to be awake early, like children on Christmas morning who refuse to sleep in. There have been plants who pulled the covers over their heads, refusing to admit that the sun has risen for the first time in four months.   comfrey leaves, melted into a thick mulch over the winter There are some plants that have chronic bed-head... like this gaillardia. It was stunning in the summertime, and all through the autumn it kept blooming until snow put an end to the show. Now its long stems are tangled up like tumbleweed. At this rate it's hard to imagine it will ever wake up.   gaillardia stems from last su...
Read more