Posted: Wednesday 10 October 2012
by Richard Jones
I view our raggedy apple tree as a wildlife resource, as it supports lots of interesting apple-eating creatures, including apple sawfly.
As usual, our raggedy apple tree has produced a meagre crop of pretty raggedy apples. I try not to let this weigh on me. Instead, I view the tree as a wildlife resource, as it supports lots of interesting apple-eating creatures, including blackbirds, wasps, codling moth… and this year apple sawfly.
Hoplocampa testudinea is a small, secretive, furtive beast. At only 6-7 mm long, it is easy to overlook, and its dull black and straw-yellow colours hardly advertise its presence. Distantly (very distantly indeed) related to bees and wasps, sawflies get their name from the female’s saw-toothed egg-laying tube. This is used to cut a slit into the tissue of an appropriate plant, which then provides a food source for the larvae. In this case, the female cuts a slice into a nascent apple bud, into which she lays an egg.
The larva then chews a tunnel just under the skin of the developing fruit, which falls, prematurely, in June. A larva may make its way through, or over, several buds, before finally falling too inside a final fruit.
Occasionally, the initial chewing to a bud is not quite enough to destroy it, or cause its fall, and the fruit continues to develop, albeit damaged. The resulting apple is distorted, and scarred with a brownish girdle.
The apples on our tree are barely edible anyway, being rather bland and tasteless. I cook with them, so I simply remove any holes, dimples, scabs, tunnels, warts and blemishes - even girdles - before they go into the pie.
