Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Lemon tree - is a big black butterfly a pest?

I have a young lemon tree in a container in on my balcony in Sydney. WHen I first brought it home it got some kind of wormy pest that made the leaves curl. I picked off the affected leaves and sprayed the tree with white oil and it has done very well for the last 2 months. TOday I noticed a beautiful huge black butterfly playing for ages on the leaves. But the tree is not in fruit or flower. I love the butterfly, but it suddenly occured to me that it could have laid eggs or something on the leaves previously, and that is what the wormy pests were before. Is this possible? Should I spray white oil again? If the butterfly is not a pest I don't want to spray white oil because I love the butterfly and would like it to come and visit.|||no its really good for the tree|||Not likely. Let it be. Lemon trees are pretty hardy anyway, so just keep feeding and using the successful oil treatments, if necessary.|||I live in California, so I can't give you specifics unfortunately. What I would do is check out this site. I noticed they had a forum too. It is a site for Integrated Pest Management and helps you to identify pests and then figure out how to deal with them in the least toxic manner.


http://www.bugsforbugs.com.au/





Honestly, I probably wouldn't worry about the butterfly. Odds are that if you see caterpillars, which are their larva, you'll be able to pick them off without using any oil. I'm not exactly sure what white oil is, but it doesn't sound like it would be useful in this situation.





This is a site based on California pests, but it may have some ideas if you are really interested (ignore if you aren't!). It's very good for this area, but I'm not sure how good it is for yours.





http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/FR鈥?/a>








Good luck!|||Its just a butterfly... and just a lemon tree... cmon...|||Butterflies like bees polinate the flowers. Do not spray. Also is you see wasps around your lemon tree let them be. They eat the bad bugs off you tree. Many lemon growers bring the wasps to their groves. I have a beautiful lemon tree and the wasps are very happy to eat th bad bugs of my tree.

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