Red Palm Weevil

The Red Palm Weevil which has virtually decimated every Canary Palm in the Algarve and has now made it's way to the Botanical Gardens in Lisbon, sadly now has a cohort in crime ...

... the Paysandisia archon, which seems to favour quite a variety of palms ...

http://www.algarvedailynews.com/features/wildlife/6163-double-whammy-virulent-new-pest-threatens-algarve-palms

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2338.2008.01214.x/full

 

eek! .... no current pesticides work (I thought that provado vine weevil killer may work)

of the palms that I have planted, it effects Chamaerops humulis ...

 

Hi "dim" and John ...

Yes, it's really bad, and as you can see from the links I put up it IS in the UK in Surrey and Kent!

I was going to attach this to a previous link I had but most of my pictures have 'stagnated' for some reason but not on my part, but here we go ...

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/red-palm-weevil.626/

 

We appear to be importing it, in plants brought in from further south.
Is it about time we stopped the free passage of plants within the EU.

 

then we would be left with ivy, dandelion, plantain and buttercup ....

imported plants is what makes gardening interesting in the UK ... I'm awaiting 2 alocasia mayan mask ....

and these will be the the highlight of my planting this year so far

 

I didn't mean stop all imports, just that they need to be checked before entering the country.
I know that Australia for instance is very careful what plant material it lets in.
Not sure if its still the same but in the US they had rules about what plant material could actually cross state lines.

We have somekind of Asian beetle boring into trees locally near me, brought in from foreign parts.
Apparently it devastates areas without natural predators.

This Palm beetle is probably similar regarding devastation, but spread would probably be much less due to the fact Britain is not exactly the palm growing centre of the world.