36 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 339 



THE CRANBERRY STATION 



East Wareham, Massachusetts 



H. J. Franklin in Charge 



Injurious and Beneficial Insects Affecting the Cranberry. (H. J. 



Franklin.) 



Half-winged Geometer. Moths of the species referred to as the "red-spotted 

 spanworm" on page 37 of Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station 

 Bulletin 239 were reared and found to be the half-winged geometer, Phigalia 

 titea (Cramer). The male moths emerged during the last decade in March and 

 the first week in April and the females mostly in the second week of April. 

 The moths are said to be found in nature till early May. They are gray. The 

 females are wingless. Some of the males have well-developed wings but many 

 have only vestigial ones. The wing expanse of the winged males ranges from 

 an inch to an inch and three-fifths. 



The worms of this insect are often rather plentiful on dry cranberry bogs in 

 late May and the first half of June, though no really destructive outbreak of 

 them there has ever been noted. They also attack apple, beech, birch, black- 

 berry, blueberry, cherry, elm, linden, maple, and rose. When full-grown, they 

 are somewhat over an inch long, the head being whitish with many black 

 spots ; the body gray with black lines along the back and sides and with a row 

 of conspicuous, irregularly shaped, much broken, light reddish-yellow spots 

 along each side and smaller yellow spots along the back; the back and sides 

 with scattered black tubercles of varying size, each tubercle bearing a single 

 rather long hair. 



This species passes the late summer, fall, and winter as a pupa. It ranges 

 west into Minnesota, south into Virginia, and north probably into Canada. 



Grape Anomala (Anomala errans Fab.). The first injury ever observed as 

 having been done to a cranberry bog by this insect occurred in Sharon, Mass., 

 and was described in the annual report of the cranberry station for 1934 1 . The 

 grubs were found in abundance in April 1936, in the turf of the Kelley and 

 Thomas bog near South Middleboro. They had injured fully an acre of the bog 

 more or less severely. This bog has many grape vines near it as did the one in 

 Sharon. 



Fire Beetle (Cryptocephalus incertus Oliv.). The first recorded injury to a 

 cranberry bog by this insect was described in the report of the cranberry 

 station for 19 15 2 . The writer never saw it so widely abundant on Cape Cod 

 bogs as in 1936. Its feeding browned noticeably five acres of a bog in Lakeville. 

 A spray of 6 pounds of lead arsenate in 100 gallons of water, applied at the rate 

 of 250 gallons an acre early in September, killed 99 percent of the beetles 

 present; and 10 pounds of derris powder (4 percent rotenone) and 3 pounds of 

 fish-oil soap in 100 gallons of water, 400 gallons to an acre, killed 90 percent of 

 the beetles. 



Much of the life-history of this species is not known, but the beetles are 

 found on the bogs from early August to very late October. They may be 

 gathered readily from the cranberry vines by sweeping with an insect net, 

 especially on warm sunny days. They generally crawl, but often fly freely. 

 They feed voraciously, attacking both the upper and the lower surface of the 

 cranberry leaves and fretting their edges. They mate freely. 



'Mass. Agr. Expt. Sta. Bui. 315. p. 31, 1935. 

 'Mass. Agr. Expt. Sta. Bui. 168, p. 33, 1916. 



