Emerald Ash Borer

This week the Tennessee Department of Agriculture announced that emerald ash borer has been found in Knox and Loudon counties. This places it very close to Swain and Graham counties in North Carolina. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture and USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service are expected to issue quarantine measures on the movement of firewood, ash nursery stock and ash timber.

Emerald ash borer beetles can kill an ash tree within three years of the initial infestation. Adults are dark green, one-half inch in length and one-eighth inch wide, and fly from April until September, depending on the climate of the area (probably more like May to August in North Carolina). Larvae spend the rest of the year beneath the bark of ash trees. When they emerge as adults, they leave D-shaped holes in the bark about one-eighth inch wide.

For more information, see the USDA Forest Service’s Pest Alert on the emerald ash borer at http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/pest_al/eab/eab.pdf. If you want help identifying an ash tree, go to http://www.anr.msu.edu/robertsd/ash/ashtree_id.html.

From: Steve Bambara and Steve Frank, Extension Entomologists