3 Insects That Infest And Damage The Flowering Dogwood


Looking for a small ornamental tree with brilliant colors and the ability to draw birds and butterflies to your yard? Look no further than the flowering dogwood, which has clusters of bright white flowers, vibrant green fruits, and shiny red fruits that attract birds and butterflies.

The dogwood can unfortunately also attract some insects, so you will need to monitor your tree for signs of infestations. Catching the problem early and calling in a tree care service or pest control service can usually protect your flowering dogwood from severe damage.

Here are a few of the insects that can call the flowering dogwood home.

Dogwood Borer

Adult dogwood borers are large moths with translucent wings. The adults lay eggs inside the bark of the dogwood tree and the hatching larvae cause the problems. Those small caterpillars burrow or bore through the bark, eating the tree's nutrients as they go and leaving behind a wet sap-like substance. An infestation will start to cause general dieback in the tree including leaves wilting and leaves, flowers, and twigs falling off the tree prematurely.

If the larvae can eat through to the heartwood at the center of the tree, the dogwood will likely die, and you will need to call a tree stump removal service. So it is important to call a tree care service or pest control service as soon as you see the wet material on the tree near the start of the growing season. Borers, when found early in the infestation, can be eradicated and controlled with chemical controls.

Flatheaded-Appletree Borer

Adult flatheaded-appletree borers resemble a broad, flattened beetle but, again, the larvae are what causes the damage to the dogwood tree. The larvae will eat through the healthy material and cause dieback similar to the dogwood borer. But there's a different telltale symptom of flatheaded-appletree borers. Rather than leaving behind a wet sap-like material, these feeding borers will create a white foamy material that should be easily noticeable on the bark.

The flatheaded-appletree borers can be treated with pesticides while the larvae are in the outer reaches of the tree. But leaving the problem untended can allow the larvae to reach the heartwood and kill off the tree.

Cottony Maple Scales

Cottony maple scales are tiny insects that can feed on the flowering dogwood. The insects are so small that groupings resemble a little brown bump on the leaves. If you can flick off the bump with a finger, and there is a dark wet material underneath, your tree likely has a scale infestation.

Scales tend to cause far less damage than borers due in part to their size and the ease of removing the creatures. Call in a tree care or pest control service as soon as you suspect an infestation. The service might be able to remove the scales manually without any chemical interventions.

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Making Your Trees Look Amazing

About a year ago, I started thinking carefully about how to reshape my yard into a more beautiful space. I spent a lot of time evaluating every single aspect of the yard, and I realized that the trees needed to be reshaped and improved. After they were all trimmed and reshaped, I was impressed with how much better they looked. This blog is all about the importance of paying for professional tree trimming, and why it just isn't worth it to do the work yourself. Check out this blog for more information about what you can do to improve your yard.

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