The color of the spiracles helps to distinguish some of these worms in their 

 later stages. The spiracles are the respiratory organs placed at intervals 

 along the sides of the body. They should be examined with a good lens. Those 

 of the armyworm and the black cutworm are blackish; those of the spotted 

 cutworm clear yellowish white rimmed with deep brown (fig. 21); those of 

 the blossom worm reddish brown to dark brown rimmed with dark brown, 

 those of the false armyworm yellowish white in the half-grown stages but deep 

 orange rimmed with deep brown as the worm matures; and those of the fall 

 armyworm pale brown with the rim dark brown. 



False Armyworm -i 



This worm is not known as a cranberry feeder elsewhere, but it has attacked 

 Cape Cod bogs for many years, probably ever since the industry began. Some 

 years it is hardly noticed, but sometimes it is an important pest, 22 destroying 

 all prospects of a crop on many bogs if it is not checked. It never infests 

 bogs on which the winter water is held till May 15, and seldom harms strictly 

 dry bogs^s much. 



Distribution and Food Plants 

 This insect ranges throughout northeastern United States and southern 

 Canada, south to the District of Columbia and west to Nebraska, Oregon, and 

 Alberta. It attacks various weeds, grasses, iris, and apple as well as cranberry. 



Character of Injury 

 The young worms often do great harm by eating out the hearts of the terminal 

 buds (fig. 22) before new growth starts. They develop with the new growth and 

 feed more and more voraciously upon it as they mature, devouring leaves, buds, 

 and flowers with equal avidity and sometimes leaving little of the new shoots 

 but the stems, but seldom eating the old foliage much. Their work is more like 

 that of gypsy moth caterpillars than that of any other cranberry pest. They 

 feed freely in the daytime. 



Description and Seasonal History 



THE EGG 



The moths winter^^ and the females lay about six hundred eggs apiece in late 

 April and very early May, placing them in masses of sometimes over a hundred 

 on the stems or the backs of the leaves of cranberry uprights (fig. 23). The 

 eggs are whitish at first but soon turn light yellow and later become reddish 

 brown. They are about a thirty-first of an inch in diameter. They hatch during 

 the second and third week of May, the egg stage lasting fifteen to twenty days. 



THE WORM 



The newly hatched worms (fig. 24) are whitish and marked with many black 

 spots, each of which bears a slender black spine, these being conspicuous under 

 a lens. They loop much like spanworms but gradually drop this movement. 

 They soon become green with whitish lines along the back and sides, being 

 somewhat darker above than below, and retain this coloration till over a third 

 grown. 



The mature caterpillar (Plate Two, figs. 7a, 7b, 7c and 7d) is about two 

 inches long and its head is uniform greenish yellow. Though the arrange- 

 ment and relative width of the various stripes and lines along the body are 



21 Xylena nupera (Lint.). Also known in cranberry literature as Calocam('a nupera. 

 " As in 190G, 1907, 1940, 1941, and 1942. ' 

 23 The moths seem to prefer damp locations for egg-laying. 



2* These moths, especially the females, may be caught readily at honey baits on tree 

 trunks about the bogs in the milder nights of April. 



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