Poplar hornet moth

[David Humphries]

its dawned on me we havent seen an image yet! so from uk moths, heres one so we know what were talking about!

 

great thread, loving it.

 

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Thought I saw one today but may of been too early.

Looked very similar though & on the base of a trunk with holes.

 

 

 

 

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[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

cooool!

[Peter]

 

Have you come across or heard of any cross road failures?

 

 

Road no, railway yes.

 

One of the contractors I work with did a spell of surveying for Network Rail, and they were specifically instructed to check trackside pops for borer damage due to one coming over onto a line.

[David Humphries]

Road no, railway yes.

 

One of the contractors I work with did a spell of surveying for Network Rail, and they were specifically instructed to check trackside pops for borer damage due to one coming over onto a line.

 

Any notion on size of the trees that failed on to the line?

 

At a recent LTOA session the pricipal TO for Barnet briefly talked about track side failures (Elm in this case).

He believed it would cost the LA somewhere in the region of 250k per half an hour of disruption to the tube lines, if one of their trees failed on to the track.

 

 

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[Peter]

I believe it was a similar size to the one at that site near Bury.

 

The cost implications of line closure etc certainly puts the cost of surveying and tree maintenance into perspective.

[Kveldssanger]

Saw a failure last week that was likely triggered by this moth - the bore holes in the sapwood area near the base allowed for the entry of a selective white rotter, which weakened a good 30% of the tree at the butt (was a P. x canadensis at around 15m tall), and it failed in the high winds.

[Phil Dye]

Hi all,

 

Just trying to keep this thread alive as I've noticed a much higher volume of hornet moth emergence holes in poplars this year, which may be due to last years' long, dry summer. I've seen them in grey and hybrid black poplars in Gloucestershire, and there are accounts of the larvae boring between 10-20cm into the tree. This is contrary to findings on this site whereby the bore holes are 4-5cm at most into the trunk.

 

This link is over 10 years old yet appears to be the only source of useful information for arbs. Does anyone know of any more research? In particular on whole tree failure? 

 

Many thanks

Phil

 

 

[Dan Maynard]

As far as I'm aware there hasn't been an epidemic of poplar failure so tempting to conclude the risk hasn't been driven up much by the moth. Maybe this will change now with the drought though as they seem to like it.

 

Only case I've identified where it was important the pop had codominant stems, shading a nice cherry, next to a road, so PCC elected to take the safe option and fell.