17 Year Cicadas are 4 Years Early!!!

[pinksand]

The cicadas are comingggggg

My neighbors and I were talking the other night about all the cicadas we've been finding and were trying to do the math to see if this is the huge brood x that emerged in '04. We realized we should have 4 more years and sighed in relief. The next morning I'm seeing all sorts of news articles about an early emergence of thousands of cicadas that are either from another brood or early for whatever reason from brood x.

Working in the garden yesterday I literally watched them wiggling out of the ground. It's both fascinating and horrifying all at once

I had just moved to Maryland when we had the last phenomenon and wasn't a gardener at that point so my focus was on not getting them tangled up in my hair or crunching the dead ones walking home from school. As a gardener now, with some very young trees... is there anything I should be worried about? Should I bother covering my baby trees with cheesecloth?

I'm not particularly looking forward to gardening among thousands of these guys screaming their little heads off and then leaving their crunchy carcasses all over the place

[jeff84]

they don't eat. they only emerge from the ground to breed before they die. they make good fish bait.

[pinksand]

You're correct that they don't do damage by eating the trees, however they can actually do quite a bit of damage by oviposition. They emerge to breed and lay eggs in the tree limbs, which actually can be quite damaging, particularly for young trees. Everything I've read says "don't plant ornamental trees within 4 years of a cidaca emergence" but I have quite a few young trees in my yard and that's what I'm most worried about! I have 2 young dogwoods, 2 young magnolias, and a young coral bark maple that I would be heartbroken over losing.

I'm just not sure if I'm worrying over nothing and they should be able to handle it or if I should cover them and when...
Do I wait and see if I notice damage before I bother covering them or will it be too late at that point?

[ButterflyLady29]

They're coming out here too. Just yesterday I watched a wasp feeding on a cicada. The cicada was easily twice the size of the wasp but the wasp was a fighter and stung the cicada several times. Then it started eating. I felt a little sorry for the cicada because the wasp left and returned several times but the cicada was too injured to move more than a few inches from where the initial encounter took place.

The females do a lot of damage to not only young trees but also the immature growth on older trees and shrubs. By the time you see the damage it is too late to prevent it. The female makes a large gash in the underneath of a young branch and lays her eggs inside the gash. In some cases the gash goes through most of the branch killing that branch. In most cases the branch will make it through a few years then snap off in a high wind.

The last time we had a large emergence all the stores were selling cicada guards for ornamental plants. I didn't buy any so I can't give you a review on their effectiveness. However I did once cover a small blueberry bush with a sheer curtain to keep birds from eating the berries. While the birds didn't get the berries the cover killed the bush.

I am quite concerned about damage to my trees too. I have a few potted citrus that are full of buds and blooms. During the last emergence my older citrus were damaged heavily.

[pinksand]

Gah! That's what I was worried about... I will be seriously devastated if I lose some of these little trees... particularly the coral bark maple cause that baby wasn't cheap! My dog came in with 3 shed cicada skins on his face and head. I'm finding them all over!

Your story of the wasp and cicada makes me feel a bit bad, but at this point I can't help but be on team wasp! I hate seeing anything suffer like that though.

I do have a bunch of cheese cloth and I wonder if light will still get through and not kill the plants. I have several blueberry bushes too and now I'm worried about them! Ugh, I really hope everything makes it through this.