Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 160, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1916 — INSECTS THAT PREY ON THE APPLE TREE [ARTICLE]

INSECTS THAT PREY ON THE APPLE TREE

There Are 176 Different Varieties Capable of Making Them Entirely fruitless. It’s almost a miracle that we have any apples at all, for there are 176 different varieties of insects which attack apple trees and are capable of making them fruitless. To fight this horde of pests the apple-producing states spend as much as $3,600,000 a year for spraying trees, remarks Philadelphia Inquirer. Scientists now say, however, that it would be much better if fruit growers spent less money in covering their trees with poison and did more to encourage birds to make their h'oihes in the orchards. Birds devour almost every kind of inseot which threatens fruit, and enough birds will accomplish wonders in freeing orchards from this danger. Farmers often object to birds, because they eat so much fruit. There are, however, numerous ways in which the amount of fruit birds destroy can be made trivial compared with the number of insects they eat. Robins, for instance, are extremely fond of cherries. But they will leave the cherry trees quite neglected if one or two trees of Russian mulberries, which ripen at tM same time as cherries, are reach. Other things which will retain the robin’s useful services as a forager without any serious loss of valuable fruit are chokeberries, holly, elder, shadeberries, wild cherries, wild grapes, greenbrier and smilax. The planting of some such trees and shrubs in the vicinity of orchards serves a double purpose. It furnishes food for the birds and makes them more inclined to make their homes in the orchards. One reason why birds often avoid orchards is because the shrubbery has been cut away and they can find no suitable nesting places.