Fall Webworm

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Published: 28 July 2020

Noticing webbing in your trees? It is probably fall webworm. Learn more about this pest of landscape trees and shrubs, here on today’s video.

=== Video Transcript ===

So fall webworm – quite a few people are probably seeing this on some of your landscape trees right now. Pretty sizable nests of caterpillars - they're small, hairy, kind of whitish in color, and they are doing quite a number on small branches on trees and shrubs.

So in our area we have fall webworm and mimosa webworm, which is very common on trees and shrubs in the area. Mimosa webworm is usually found in May and June. You see it on mimosa trees, hence the name "mimosa webworm," but fall webworm is more prevalent on other species of trees. This is a crab apple here at the Arboretum, and seeing a lot of insects on this branch.

The easiest way to take care of this issue is to prune out a branch that has a nest, or you can take a glove and kind of move it off with your fingers as well if it's a small enough nest of insects. Forgive the noise we are right by the highway. But this is a pretty nice nest to show. So we can zoom in a little bit and look at the little guys in there. Kind of hard to see. On this branch you can see through the leaves actually. There they are hiding, kind of moving around.

Yes, at this stage they're a little bit too large, there's too much webbing to effectively spray anything on the tree, so you really need to do a mechanical pulling of them off, or cutting off a branch. So there you have it - fall webworm.