A friend recently showed me a photograph of his rotting plum tree, with woodlice crawling around the affected area. Were the woodlice a pest, and how should he get rid of them?
A friend recently showed me a photograph (left) of his rotting plum tree, with woodlice crawling around the affected area. Were the woodlice a pest, and how should he get rid of them?
This reminded me of a plum tree in my own family garden when I was a child. Like this plum, the trunk had a great rotting hole in it, with soft wood crumbling at its heart, but branches carried healthy leaves and fabulous fruits.
Woodlice can often be found among rotting leaf litter and in dark, dank parts of the garden under piles of sticks and vegetation. They are unlikely to do any damage to healthy plants, but have clearly made a home in the soft centre of this plum tree.
It's often said that plants flower well under some stress, and despite the obvious signs of damage to this tree trunk it is not adversely affecting fruit production. However, this will be weakening the tree, and branches may benefit from support to prevent them breaking or pulling down the whole tree.
My friend decided to clean out the soft and rotten wood at the heart of this plum and fill the hole with concrete. Perhaps the tree won't last for many more years, but I think his DIY trunk repairs may well have helped reduce further rotting, and keep him in plums for the near future.
Quite where his woodlice have gone to I don't know!
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