Red Palm Weevil Disease

I know some of you know of the plight of the Phoenix canariensis here and that I gave a talk at a gardening club on the West coast last month regarding this disaster.

Since then I have a website highlighting this problem as, in many instances, it is not being taken as seriously as it should be. This beetle can completely destroy palms hundreds of years old within 3-4 months.

Here is my site .... http://simplesites.planetaclix.pt/weevil/RPWeu.html and I am more than pleased that the European Palm Society has asked to link my site to theirs. I do a regular round to visually see the demise of the palms and photograph them and my site will be updated accordingly.

As others may know, we have been visiting the Vet on a regular basis of late and I am sad to put up these pictures of the two palms on their premises which were perfectly healthy in the summer when we first took Chere Khan for her initial vaccinations ...









It is thought we will have no male palm trees left within the next two years.

 

As I said elsewhere Vicky, it is a sickening site (not your website!).
What are the Authorities doing about it?

 

Hiya strongy ...

The authorities are doing all they can and spending fortunes ... in our nearest town Algoz they have uprooted and disposed of them all. In Silves (the old Moorish capital where I weekly shop 20 minutes away) they have drilled and injected into the palms that line the road* and now have the Pheromone traps hanging in them (sadly one has succumbed even with all this treatment). The treatment now has to go on permanently but there is no guarantee it will work.

This critter starts at the crown and works its way down through the trunk and with females producing 200-300 eggs at a time and from beginning to end is only four months ... what chance is there of survival of the plant?

One cannot, and I stress cannot eliminate this critter.

I don't think it will be too long that someone finds it in the UK as most of the palms come from Spain which has already lost just about all of theirs ... however, the cold weather there will suppress it thankfully.

* I think in Country Life I have photos of these palms two years ago .. just stunning.

PS We now have the Wild Pine Nematode problem here up North ... so disasterous that when the authorities find ONE pine infected they clear the area 50kms around it. I'm working on that one as well.

 

Is this Weevil native to the Med or come from further afield?
I was just wondering why it has only recently become the problem that it evidently now is.

 

What a tragedy..............
Don't think it will come over here though,to bloomin' cold.

 

Good evening, strongy. No, this Weevil is not native to the Med but first reared it's ugly head in the 80s in Southeast Asia where it devasted the Coconut Palms. Having done so, it moved it's way into the Middle East where it appeared to settle in Egypt and found it's new host, the Phoenix Canary Palm. From there it travelled around the Med and settled in Southern Spain. It then flew across the border and only arrived in the Algarve two years ago and within another two years we probably won't have any male Palms. :( I did my first research on it perhaps a year and a half ago for a friend of mine who owns an exotic garden center.

Roders, if I wasn't here watching it happen, I would say it would be unbelievable. Due to the climate, there is little chance it would survive in the UK thankfully.

 

Vicky, another question, you say Phoenix Canary Palm but does this also include the true date palm P. Dactylifera? which originated inthe Middle East.

 

Yes, it can attack that also. However, we have very few of those here ... in fact, I personally have only seen one that I know of. If you look at my link you will see all the species that it 'could' attack. Shall go eat a few dates now and savour them ....

 

I just wondered whether the Date growing area of Iran/ Iraq /Tunisia and other countries there have had their palms wiped out.