After a long evasion from my blogger duties (quite an active summer, I confess...) here I am back to keep you, my dear persisent reader, updated on the last insect whose eating&mating activities exceeded damage tolerance level. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Jasmine Moth (Margaronia Unionalis, or Palpita unionalis, some scientific stuff
here (in italian) and a short wiki
here).
To our, and to a number of other olive growers disappointment, the Jasmine Moth does not only like to feast on jasmine plants as its name may justly induce you to believe, but on olives too, and it's a gargantuan eater nonetheless. If left unchecked, it can eat all the young branch springs and damage, if not completely reverse, a year of growth.
How does he achieve such a feat you may ask? Well, this small moth lays eggs on the young, tender new branches like this one:
After a few days, a larvae develops from the deposited eggs and starts feeding on the said tender young leaves, until reaching the lenght of 7-8 mms whereupon it transforms itself into a moth and then it's the same process all over again.
In the meantime, what it does on the young olives looks like this:
or this
As I said, this kind of damage could hurt our olive growing plans for years to come, setting back entrance into production for years. Here is another picure
