Worms living inside of leaves on blackberry plant

[cityGarden]

There are worms that are living inside the leaves on my blackberry plant and eating the leaves from the inside out. The worms are about 1/2" long. The leaves turn brown from where the worms have already been.

I can flick the leaf with my finger and the worm moves around inside. They have created brown air pockets from where they have eaten the leaf from the inside out.

What do I do about these? and does anyone know what they are?

[applestar]

They would be either leafminers (vegetable leafminer fly larvae. tomatoes also get tomato leafminer moth caterpillars) or sawfly larvae, I think.

If caught early, you can squish them between the leaf surfaces or removing and bagging or burning the infested leaves. They are difficult to treat by spray, etc. because they are protected inside. Spraying also kills the predators that would take care of them. You can try using sticky traps to catch the adults.

[cityGarden]

THey don't look like the pictures from yahoo images of leafminers. They don't leave little trails. It's like 1/3 of the blackberry leaf has turned brown and is filled with air and a a little worm/catapilliar lives inside.

We do have lots of moths around here so I guess it could be sometype of moth.

I guess I will just go smoosh them inside the leaf before they destroy the entire leaf.

I would say the plant has around 50+ leafs on it and maybe 7 are affected.

[Habanero]

You might also try natural predators, like a little bag of ladybug larvae you can buy at nurseries and such. Ugly critters, but highly effective!

[applestar]

There's this -- Blackberry leaf gall https://bugguide.net/node/view/720692
...apparently some kind of a fly causes it.