• Blog
    • General Gardening
    • Gardening for Children
    • Gardening Videos
    • Insect Pests
    • Landscape Design
    • Trees
    • Vegetables & Fruits
    • Weeds
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Event Announcements
  • Gardening Videos
  • Resources
    • Online Resources
      • Soil Testing Information for Home Gardeners
    • Western North Carolina Gardening Guide
  • The Learning Garden
    • The Learning Garden Program Schedule – 2023
  • Youth Outreach
  • Garden Helpline
    • Collecting Samples of Plants and Insects
  • About Us
    • About Us
      • How to Become an Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer
    • The Association
    • Contact Us
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Sponsors
    • Donate
Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County
Blog / Gardening for Children / Kids Post: What is chewing the trees?

Kids Post: What is chewing the trees?

September 23, 2019

In fall we watch for tree leaves to turn pretty colors—but before they turn you may see that a lot of those leaves are being chewed up! What eats tree leaves?

Leaf chewers

Although many people call leaf chewers “worms,” most aren’t worms at all! They are the early stages—called larvae—of a variety of insects.

Caterpillars are larvae that grow up to be butterflies or moths. Although many caterpillars eat plants such as milkweeds or members of the carrot family—including parsley and dill—some prefer trees!

  • Inchworms (fall cankerworms) are fun to watch because they move by inching along, but they can do lots of leaf damage to many of our most popular trees, including maples, oaks, beeches, and hickories. The adults are gray moths; the males have wings, but the females are wingless!
  • Inchworm

    Fall cankerworm wingless female moth
  • Catalpa worms can eat most all the leaves off catalpa trees during the summer—they become sphinx moths!
  • Catalpa worm

    Catalpa worm damage
  • Orangestriped oakworms strip leaves from many types of oak trees as fall approaches—they become orange moths with a white spot on each wing.
  • Orange striped oakworm
  • Fall webworms are another moth caterpillar whose larvae eat the leaves of many trees— birches, cherries, crabapples, hickories, sourwoods, and walnuts—they live inside a web until they are ready to form a cocoon to become a fluffy white moth next spring.
  • Fall Webworm (Hyphantria cunea)_James Emery_CC BY 2.0_Flickr
    Fall webworms

Sawfly larvae grow up to be sawflies—they are small flying insects that lives such short lives that you may never see the adults—or mistake them for wasps if you do! The good news is they cannot sting. Their larvae can do a lot of damage to trees and shrubs, though. Dogwood sawfly larvae may “skeletonize” the leaves of many types of dogwoods, leaving just the leaf veins!

Dogwood sawfly larvae
Dogwood sawfly larvae damage

What can you do about leaf chewers?

Birds and predatory insects feed on these critters, helping manage the damage! Also, most of these leaf chewers do their eating late enough in the year that the trees will soon drop their leaves anyway, so most don’t suffer any serious harm.

  • Catalpa worms eat a bit earlier in the summer, though, and if you love to fish, you can help save tree leaves by collecting these chewers to use as bait!
  • You can stop fall webworm damage by disturbing the web—get an adult to help you cut off any of the webbed areas, use a stick to tear up the web, or use a strong stream of water from a garden hose to bust up the web!
  • Some years fall cankerworms can eat almost all the tree leaves, producing a lot of droppings— their swinging down on spiderweb-like strands bothers some people, too! You can ask an adult to help you trap the new female moths as they crawl up the trees later this fall, once the leaves have dropped and we’ve had a freeze. The City of Charlotte has instructions for how to make sticky band traps: https://charlottenc.gov/Engineering/LandscapeManagement/Trees/Documents/CankerwormBrochure2017.pdf#search=fall%20cankerworm

Article by Debbie Green, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

 For More Information:

Inchworms (fall cankerworm):

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/fall-cankerworm

Catalpa worms:

http://capitalnaturalist.blogspot.com/2015/07/catalpa-sphinx-moth-caterpillars.html

Orangestriped oakworms:

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/orangestriped-oakworm

Fall webworms:

https://www.buncombemastergardener.org/tag/fall-webworms/

Dogwood sawfly:

https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/2009/8-12/sawfly.html

 

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Categories Gardening for Children Tags Catalpa Worm, children gardening, Dogwood Sawfly, Fall Cankerworm, insects, orange-striped oak worm

NC Cooperative Extension; Empowering People, Providing Solutions

Blog posts written and published by Extension Master GardenerSM volunteers in Buncombe County.

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to our blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,786 other subscribers

Recent Posts

  • Rose Pests and Pathogens, April 13
  • Gardening Video: Bountiful Backyard Berries
  • Online Seminar: Fruit Trees for Home Gardens, April 10
  • Climbing Roses, April 6
  • Gardening Video: Terrariums: Gardens Under Glass

Categories

  • Events
    • Extension in Buncombe County
    • Extension Master Gardener Plant Clinic
    • Lectures & Seminars
    • Plant Sales
    • School Garden Grants
  • Flowers
    • Bulbs
    • Perennials & Biennials
    • Roses
    • Wildflowers
  • Gardening for Children
  • Gardening Videos
  • General Gardening
    • Installation & Planting
    • Mulch
    • Native Plants
    • Propagation
    • Seasonal Chores
    • Soils & Fertilizers
  • Houseplants
  • Landscaping
    • Firewise Landscaping
    • Landscape Design
    • Site Conditions
    • Water Management
  • Lawns
  • Pest Management
    • Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
    • Invasive Plants
    • Pesticides
    • Weeds
  • Plant Diseases
  • Plant Insects
    • Beneficial Insects
    • Insect Pests
    • Invasive Insects
  • Shrubs
  • Special Gardens
    • Container Gardens
    • Herb Gardens
    • Pollinator Gardens
    • Rain Gardens
    • Shade Gardens
  • Trees
  • Vegetables & Fruits
  • Wildlife

Contact Us

Buncombe County Extension Office
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Helpline 828-255-5522

Events

Keep up with our events by subscribing to the blog or checking our Events Calendar.

Explore the Archives

Back to Top

Copyright © 2023 Extension Master Gardeners of Buncombe County. Privacy Policy.