The Ohio State University

Home TurfNotes In south Florida insects seem to be everywhere when warm temperatures arrive. The two pictures in this posting were taken the week of March 10th around Miami, Florida and are two different insect issues. The beetle shown to the left might be found crawling on south Florida putting greens. The beetle is one of the bumbling flower beetle species. There are seeral of these in Florida. The adults commonly feed on flowers during the day and the larvae are most commonlly found in decaying mulch of flower beds. These beetles are in the same subfamily of scarabs that the green june beelte is placed. The larvae have a habit of crawling on their backs in this subfamily! The larave are rarely found in turf, but can be there where lots of decaying thatch is present. The larvae surface at night and feed on grass clippings, grass blades and decaying thatch.

The photograph to the left was also taken in south Florida. The holes in this photograph look like the classic cutworm pock marks. The turf has already begun to close the holes indicating thte cutworm has finished feeding or has moved on to another spot. As a diagnostic sign, fall armyworms can make similar spots but they usually prefer to set up in aerificaiton holes and don't normally make these two-spot, side-by-side marks.

Posted by John Miller & David Shetlar