Summer Meeting. " 69 



If the egg hatches and the larva lives long enough to eat its way 

 into the pulp a distance of a quarter to a half inch and then dies, the 

 apples, whether young or medium size, may, if no diseases enter at this 

 point, outgrow the "sting" and leave a scar. This scar will be situated 

 in a depression of greater or less extent, according to the age of the 

 apple when "stung" and to the length of the life of the larva, and the 

 depth to which it burrowed in the pulp, before it died. Such a scar in 

 what is at this time a shallow depression, but will become greater as the 

 apple grows, is shown in Fig. 2 g. By cutting open such a depressed 

 scar, one will observe that the course of the young larva can be easily 

 traced by the dark colored and harder tissue that forms a short thread 

 where the larva ate its way. This tissue has a very bitter taste, becomes 

 quite dense, and does not enlarge as does the surrounding tissue, and 

 hence the depression increases as the apple becomes larger. It is in 

 thic way that the bulk of our knotty apples are formed. A single apple 

 may have one or many egg punctures or "stings," and these may be 

 distributed throughout the season, so that we have single apples covered 

 more or less with scars, depressions and stings. 



Such apples even though not attacked in these places by fungoid 

 or other diseases, cannot be sold to be placed in cold storage ; but it must 

 be borne in mind that these various "stings" open up the way for diseases 

 to enter, and cause the apple to rot or decay at such punctures, and ab- 

 solutely ruin them while yet on the trees. When "stung" apples are 

 placed in cold storage they soon decay at the places punctured ; and since 

 the adult beetles begin to make the feeding punctures or "stings" by 

 the middle of May, while the apples are very small, and continue to do 

 so throughout the apple growing season ; and since the egg punctures 

 or "stings" are made in great numbers during the latter part of .May, 

 and during all of June and the fore part of July; and also since the 

 young beetles emerging along in August also make feeding punctures, 

 thus resulting in the "sting^' of the apple throughout the entire season, 

 it is easy for one to see the serious nature of this trouble — the "sting" — 

 caused by these plum curculio in the apples. The plum curculio will 

 live and breed in the fruit of the plum, peach, nectarine, prune, apricot, 

 cherry, apple, pear, quince, wild plum, wild crab apple and hawthorn. 

 However, it prefers our cultivated plums to other fruit and breeds better 

 in them. It also breeds well in the peach, but does not do anything like 

 so well in the apple. Hence it is that if plum and peach orchards are 

 placed near apple orchards, such apple orchards suffer more from this 

 infect than would otherwise be the case. Early in the spring the beetles 

 feed on the developing leaves, later on the petals of developing flowers, 

 and stiil later entirely on the fruit. 



