Guess I should count my blessings here in Madison. We get a few cicadas now and then, and they sure make a racket when they are up in the trees, trying to attract the opposite sex. I have never seen significant damage to trees and plants, though.

Your brood of 13 year cicadas is not present in my area, but I had a brood of 17 year cicadas several years ago and it was terrible. There is a lot of variability from one area to the next even with the same brood. All my fruit trees sustained damage except for the paw paws which they avoided. The cicadas do not chew the branches; the females lay their eggs in the branches by stabbing them multiple time with their ovipositors so that the branches become weak and eventually many will break. Peach trees were especially hard hit. Any with fruit may break when the fruit gets heavier if they have not already. If you look closely at the damaged twigs (pull them apart at the weak spots) you will see the small white eggs within the splintered wood. These will hatch and the larvae will drop to the ground, burrow into the soil and latch on to the tree roots and feed for the next 13 years. I ended up pruning off most of the damaged branches which meant no fruit for the next year as well. Those that I left were weak indefinitely and not worth keeping. The pears and apples were more sturdy and tended to repair the damage better. My sympathy--you'll usually read that they are a nuisance but harmless--but that was not the case in my experience.

13 year and 17 year cicadas are not to be confused with the more common "dog day" cicadas which are present in much smaller numbers every year and never do significant damage.

We had them here in central Alabama back in May, but we didn't notice any damage in our blueberries and peaches. At least not that I could notice. However, they did like our Japanese persimmon trees for some reason. But I haven't noticed any real damage to them either. As far as the stink goes, we're in a big drought down here, so as soon as they died, they got cooked.

The masses of them varied greatly even in our area. They could be found in huge clusters rather than being widespread. Swvdave, thanks for that info. I did remove all the broken branches and hauled them far away. I wish now I had burned them. I had half a cartful from my blueberries alone. The damage on them was severe. Is there anything to do in the future to repel/kill them or their grubs??There are still quite a few flying around, but fortunately the stink is diminishing.

Brook

Sounds like I had better prune off the damaged branches on my young apple trees. I only noted damage on the first year trees, but now I'll check the older trees more closely. We had a massive infestation.

Chuck