College of Agriculture & Natural Resources

• American brown rot

  American brown rot is common on apricot, peach, nectarine, plum and cherry.

• Hawthorn dark bug

  The young adult is black with red wing markings, which disappear a few days after it metamorphoses into an adult.

• Apple rust mite

  The vermiform adult has two pairs of legs at the front of its body. Brownish yellow in color, they are invisible to the naked eye, requiring a minimum magnification of 15X to be observed.

• Pear midge

  The adult resembles a very small mosquito or gnat; the body is brown and the wings transparent with simple veins. The larva is a white maggot with no legs or visible head; the posterior end is blunt, and the front end tapers to a point.

• Minute pirate bug

  Adults are very similar in size to the mullein plant bug (Campylomma varbasci), but their head is narrower and their wings are colored contrasting white and black.

• Southern blight

  Trees attacked by the fungus show a general decline. In the early phase of disease, a dense mat or web of white mycelium is evident at the base of the tree.

• Climbing cutworms

  Adults are dark brown or grayish colored moths. Larvae tend to be smooth caterpillars with few hairs, brown or black head capsules, and bodies a dull gray-brown background color with stripes, spots, or dark brown, black, yellow or white splotches.

• Apple pith moth

  Head of adult is covered with white scales; forewings are narrow, mostly black or dark brown with white marks and usually with an irregular faint, rusty yellow line in the middle, and with two prominent black scale tufts.

• Lesser peachtree borer

  Adult is a clear-winged, metallic-blue moth that has two or more yellow bands across the abdomen, giving it a wasp-like appearance.

• Eastern tent caterpillar

  The adult is reddish brown with two white, transverse-parallel bands. Masses of shiny black eggs are laid in a ring around twigs. Larvae have long silky hairs on their body and a yellow line on their back.

• Oystershell scale

  The adult female remains immobile under a small brown scale in the shape of an oyster shell attached to the bark of branches. The white and oval eggs are laid inside the scale and crawlers emerge in the spring during the petal fall stage of apple.

• Brown rot

  Infected flowers turn brown, wither, and either become fixed to twigs as a gummy mass or drop like unpollinated flowers.

• Verticillium wilt

  Leaves wilted or browned on one or several branches, often remaining attached; the rest of the tree appears healthy. Young trees are often killed by infection.

• Widestriped green fruitworm

  The adult has bluish or steel gray wings marked with inconspicuous mottled patches.

• Codling moth

  The adult's forewings are striped with fine brown-gray lines and a distinctive bronze to brown-black oval spot at the tip. Eggs are laid on the leaves or fruit.

• Lesser appleworm

  The adult is a small gray moth with distinct small orange bands or patches on the wings; some blue is also evident in newly emerged specimens.

• Green June beetle

  The adult is velvet green dorsally with yellow-orange margins on the elytra. Ventrally it is a shiny metallic green mixed with orangish yellow. The larva is a large, C-shaped grub that lives in the soil and is not found in the trees.

• White apple leafhopper

  Adults are creamy white with short antennae, translucent wings, and a long wedge-shaped body. Usually found on the underside of leaves, they jump and fly with great agility. Nymphs are yellowish, wingless and very mobile; they generally move in a back-and-forth motion.

• Apple sucker

  Adult resembles a miniature cicada, greenish yellow to yellow in color but sometimes containing reds or browns, with eyes pale green to reddish brown, and long slender antennae; wings are transparent and iridescent.

• Woolly apple aphid

  The colonies of reddish brown adults and nymphs produce waxy secretions, which resemble small tufts of wool or cotton batting. The aphids are without cornicles, possessing only abdominal pores.