gazillion white caterpillars on tree! help!!!
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Anonymous
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I just discovered some web like looking stuff on my cherry tree (pretty young tree, planted in spring this year by merrifield) and thought they were spider mites but I just saw a ton of disgustingly furry small white caterpillars crawling out from the webs. The webs have since spread to many branches (it started from just 2 a few days ago). Help!!! Does anyone know how to remedy it? I went to merrifield when I first noticed the webs and they told me to bring a cutting in but I read that furry caterpillars could be poisonous so prefer if I could call a pest control company or remedy it myself.
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Anonymous
| That is a specific kind that kills trees |
Anonymous
| Google tent caterpillars OP |
Anonymous
| Those are almost certainly webworms. They will eat the foliage but probably not damage the tree. You can just leave them alone. |
Anonymous
| Oh, and they aren't poisonous! |
Anonymous
| I googled all the caterpillars mentioned and it does look like webworms. Thank you SO much, I would never have known otherwise. I kept on searching for furry white caterpillars. I just bought a pesticide spray online and hope that it will be effective. Thanks again! |
Anonymous
| Why would you kill them if they are harmless? |
Anonymous
+1 Why even come here to find out what kind of caterpillars they are if when you learn they're not going to damage your tree your response is, "Oh good, now that I know what I'm dealing with I can kill them all"? 
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Anonymous
| They are destroying my tree, more and more branches are encased with the webs with the leaves and branches turning brown and dying. It’s a young tree , doesn’t have that many branches to spare. I bought ladybugs when I thought they were spider mites as I didn’t want to resort to pesticides. Im sorry if I offended you. |
Anonymous
Because they're eating the tree, dummy! OP paid $$$ for that tree, went to the trouble of planting it, and didn't do so for the purposes of setting an all you eat buffet for insects. Are you really this thick?!?! |
Anonymous
Why are you so angry? |
Anonymous
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OP, you don't need to resort to pesticides. If you really don't want them there (and I get why you don't, since the tree is young and vulnerable) you can just knock them down into a bag or something and throw them away/flush them down the toilet/step on them. The problem with pesticides is that you'll also kill other beneficial insects that are in/around your tree.
I get aphids on my plants but I don't use pesticides--I wipe them off with soapy water. It's a little tedious and gross but it's better than poison. |
Anonymous
This. Op, the soapy water suffocates them. Pesticides could harm your tree but also don’t stay where you spray them. The pesticides will kill beneficial insects too. |
Anonymous
| Thanks PPs. I diluted some dawn soap (read that it is biodegradable) and sprayed it on the caterpillars+webs at best I could. I hope it works, I do not want to resort to using pesticides unless necessary but the extent+speed to which they are building webs around my tree is really quite horrifying! |
Anonymous
1. They're not eating the tree, and 2. If OP thinks they are, she didn't need to figure out what they were first before deciding on annihilation. Put a few more punctuation marks in your next post, it really sells it. |