Narcissus fly

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:38:03 PDT
Mary SUe wrote, Does anyone know
>whether this fly is interested in bulbs from any other family besides
>Amaryllidaceae?


As far as I can see, it isn't. I have a large number of genera and families 
represented in my collection, and I have found bulb fly larvae only in 
Narcissus, Galanthus, and Sternbergia. I now cover all the sternbergias and 
galanthus with screens or Reemay before the flies emerge but the narcissus 
are so scattered around and so many of them that I haven't grouped and 
covered them yet. I squeeze the bulbs hard when I lift them to test whether 
they have grubs -- the species I grow in the frames are all quite small so 
this is effective though very disgusting.

This year spring was very cold for a long time, and the flies did not 
emerge until about a month later than I have seen them before; they must 
emerge in response to soil temperature (the larvae pupate in the soil, not 
inside the bulbs)? Anyway, so far I have found very few infested narcissus 
bulbs, and no pot with more than one bad one.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA




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