80 INSECTS AFFECTING VEGETATION 



often does, in great numbers almost from the outset, its injuries are 

 severe even in seasons when only a moderate percentage of a crop 

 is lost, because the blossoms chiefly injured are the earliest, and con- 

 sequently the shortage is largely in the early fruit, or that which 

 commands the highest market price. 



Injury, as already stated, is due to the work of the female in 

 the course of oviposition. Selecting an unopened, nearly mature 

 bud she perforates with her beak the corolla or outer husk and turn- 

 ing about deposits in the hole thus formed a single egg. She then 

 crawls to the pedicel or flower-stem just below the bud and with the 

 microscopic but scissors-like mandibles at the extremity of her beak 

 deliberately punctures or cuts it in such manner that the portion 

 containing the bud hangs by a mere shred of the epidermis and soon 

 afterwards falls to the ground. 



The object attained by the parent insect in puncturing the stem 

 is twofold: (1) The development of the bud is arrested, and its outer 

 envelopes of sepals and petals remain folded, thus retaining the eggs 

 or growing larvae of the insect and the pollen on which the latter 

 feed; (2) the bud falling to the ground is kept moist, whereas if 

 permitted to remain upon the stem it would eventually have become 

 so dry as to prevent the development of the insect within. Ordinarily 

 a single larva inhabits a bud, but in exceptional cases two individuals 

 may develop in one bud. (Cir. 21, Rev. Ed. U. S. Dep. of Agr.) 



Owing to the difficulty of contending with the insect when 

 once it has invaded a strawberry bed, it is necessary to have recourse 

 to preventive measures. A nearly perfect preventive consists in cov- 

 ering the beds. This covering, which may be of muslin or some 

 similar light material, if properly applied will not only exclude the 

 weevil and other noxious insects, but will secure immunity from 

 frost and is moreover a positive benefit to the berries, which ripen a 

 week or ten days earlier and are superior also in quality and size. 

 Whatever covering is employed should be put in place over the beds 

 at least a week before the appearance of the first blossoms and may 

 be safely removed as soon as the first berries are ready for market. 

 Pistillate plants, or those which produce no pollen, require no such 

 protection. 



It is obviously unsafe, in districts where the weevil is known to 

 be abundant, to trust entirely to staminate varieties of berries. It is 

 advisable, therefore, to grow chiefly pistillate varieties and just as 

 few staminates as are necessary for the purpose of fertilization. The 

 insects, when they become abundant, will mass themselves upon the 

 staminate plants, where they may be destroyed by spraying and 

 similar measures. 



The most satisfactory method of securing freedom from injury 

 by the strawberry weevil is to plant very profuse-blooming varieties, 

 and many have agreed that the following, in the order named, are 

 the best that have been tested to secure this end : Rio, Superior, Ten- 

 nessee Prolific and Gandy. 



In the same manner that the rows of staminates used for fertili- 

 zation constitute a protection for the other rows, certain varieties, 



