What's this worm/ larva eating roots of Heuchera in pots?

last year

last modified: last year

Update: Since my pest was so quickly ID'd I'm including PNW exchange forum in hopes of receiving advice on methods of control I can use that work in my neck of the woods. Thanks all! Kathy

Original post:

While tending to my Coral Bells in big pots a few weeks ago, I had discovered a CB plant was simply sitting on top of soil with only tiny hair roots and not even attached to pot soil. Since it's Fall, no heat so it looked pretty okay health wise. I removed that fairly new plant, a "Forever Purple" CB & stuck it in ground. Today, I found the same situation in two other pots with an older NOID CB & a newish "Forever Red" CB. This time I when I lifted the Forever Red CB, I saw tiny whitish curved larva? or worms? sitting on top of soil at CB root. I scooped them out & dug down to confirm all the root is gone. These curved wormy larva things have a brighter light brown color at one end that must be the head. My iPhone pics here are not sharp, The last pic shows the bottom of a CB plant with no roots except tiny hair roots. Can you ID these nasty things for me & tell me what to do? BTW, these pots have other plants like ivy, sword fern, lonicera in them which are all still attached to soil & seem fine. I have many, many Coral Bells throughout my yard & it dawned on me that I had couple newer ones in ground thata couple months back, I discovered this same issue with but had chalked it up to a one off thing from either slugs or squirrels, both the bane of my garden here in PNW Zone 8.

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Comments (3)

Embothrium
last year
last modified: last year
Weevils. Enough of them being present to spoil specimens seems to coincide with broken down, comparatively airless potting medium. Otherwise they will often eat off heucheras and primulas planted in the ground at the soil line. In both situations keeping plants refreshed as in repotted with adequate frequency or lifted, divided and replanted (rather than being left unattended for years at a time) when growing in terra firma appears to be called for.
KW PNW Z8 thanked Embothrium
KW PNW Z8
Original Author
last year
@Embothrium Well, I’ve just spent @ 40 minutes looking at pics of weevil larva - that’s exactly what’s eating my plant roots - and reading about life cycles of vine weevils. Yuck! I’m wondering if some of these came with my new Coral Bells from the nursery. But, the adult weevil damage pictures of big chunks out of leaf edges sure looks like what I’ve seen on my Bergenia, some Coral Bells & a Clematis & a couple of my hardy fuchsia this summer. Seems I may have had this growing problem & not known until the larva cycle started. I do divide my older coral bells in the ground & my big pots are refreshed with new plants or everything taken out & rearranged in them each spring. Maybe the best plan for control is beneficial nematodes and diatomaceous earth? I did have an active tree frog population in my yard but didn’t see many this past year so maybe I’ve lost some of my natural controls for these pests. I have lots of birds too so don’t want to spray & kill off everything. Not clear if that can be done now or wait until spring.
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KW PNW Z8
Original Author
last year
last modified: last year
Today I sprayed package of 7 million Beneficial Nematodes around all of my planting beds & sprayed the rest on grass & groundcover. Figured it was wet enough with the rain we’ve been getting here in SW WA & the ground is still warm. I bought them from local Wilco farm store & they were refrigerated & in a bag. On further reading, I learned there are different kinds of BN’s - who knew that? Not me! I’m not sure I got the right kind for weevils or their larvae with the Steinernema Feltiae that I bought. Figured I’ll need to do this again in spring so I’ll read more & pay attention to which kind I get.