Under the Microscope Archive
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Asian Long-Horned Beetle
Last summer, in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, people had to cross the street to avoid the limbs that were falling from Norway maples that line the neighborhood’s streets. One of them complained, and before long employees from New York’s Parks Department arrived and noticed large holes in the trees. At first they thought the damage was the work of… (more)
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Black Knot
Wherever cherries or plums grow, so does black knot, one of the most conspicuous of all tree diseases. Elongated, black misshapen galls surround the twigs, and badly affected trees are miserable looking, as though the contents of several pooper scoopers had been flung into their branches. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable pdf of this… (more)
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Carpenter Ants
The sight of an ant crossing the table on a zigzag course in search of the sugar bowl is so familiar that the magnificent social system of which she is an emissary rarely gets a passing thought. Perhaps for good reason: that little ant’s world is so incredibly complex that thinking about it could be even more confusing than trying… (more)
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Powderpost Beetles
Late last winter I noticed a scattering of tiny dead beetles on the windowsill at the top of the cellar stairs. I immediately suspected that they had originated in the firewood pule at the foot of the stairs, but beyond my presumption that they’d spent a spell battering at the windowpane I had no idea what these creatures had been… (more)
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Frost Cracks
When, as occasionally happens, someone hears a very loud sharp noise on a really cold night and then notices that a nearby tree has split open, it’s quite understandable that the startled witness blames the thermometer reading and calls it a frost crack. The explanation seems obvious: cracks are caused when the wood near the outside of the tree trunk… (more)
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Pear Thrips
Ten years ago tiny insects that few people had ever heard of caused a shocking amount of damage to sugar maples in Vermont and other parts of the Northeast. In May 1998, maple leaves were deformed, shrunken and laced with brown. Maples on about 500,000 acres in Vermont and over two million acres in the Northeast were affected. The complete… (more)
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Saddled Prominent
Though the odd name of this caterpillar might make you wonder, it will also help you identify the beast- even if, alas, only at one brief stage of its life cycle. During the last and largest stage of the larval phase, most of these big green caterpillars have a very prominent reddish saddle-shaped marking, positioned about where you would put… (more)
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Sugar Maple Borer
A maple tree in which a sugar maple borer has been raised will never be the same again. The work of just a single one of these wood-eating larvae- rosy-cream colored, robust caterpillars which max out at just over two inches long- most often scars its host for life. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable… (more)
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Yellow Birch Conk
If you’ve seen a yellow birch conk, there’s a good chance that you’ll remember it. Large and black, with cracked surfaces, these masses of fungal tissue appear to have burst suddenly from the tree. In fact, they’ve grown rather slowly and are hard, woody and perennial. By the time the conks are visible on the outside, the inside of the… (more)
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Red Turpentine Beetle
After reading about the large number of sophisticated weapons that bark beetles wield when attacking trees, it’s a relief to look out the window and see that there are still trees out there. The complete content of this article is part of the downloadable pdf of this issue, available in our online shop.