BALTIMORE — We are fully into springtime, almost into summer, and everything should be green. But people in Western Maryland are seeing more trees missing their foliage, and the culprit is several species of inchworm — or loopers.
And these caterpillars are making a meal of 10's of thousands of acres of trees.
Watch as experts say this is a "normal occurrence"
"Roughly 30,000 acres of defoliation occurred throughout the western part of Maryland," said Patrick Simmons, an Entomologist with Maryland Department of Agriculture. " We had outbreaks as well just as recently as like 2014 and 2016, although they weren't as severe as this one. This is a normal occurrence. It's part of the life cycle of these caterpillars, and these are all native species."
Anyone living in Garrett, Allegany or Washington County may wonder what happened to spring.
"They'll be able to see big, big patches of trees that basically look like winter, even though it's late spring, almost summer now," Simmons said. "The leaves on the trees will be almost entirely gone, in some cases entirely gone."
While this may be annoying for homeowners in the affected area, the Maryland Department of Agriculture says that this is completely normal.
"They're also what's called outbreak species or boom and bust species," Simmons said. "So, this is kind of a normal part of their life cycle. It's annoying for us, but it's pretty normal for them."
The Maryland Department of Agriculture says that for the most part the trees should be fine.
"They're gonna start putting on that new flush probably in late June, and then they'll be totally refoliated, most of them by mid-July," Simmons said.
In the meantime, homeowners will just be dealing with lots of caterpillars.
"Folks that do have property in the outbreak areas, they're gonna have caterpillars all over the place," Simmons said. "The caterpillars produce these long strands of silk that they use to kind of float from one place to another, and then eventually they'll drop to the ground to go through their pupation stage, which just means that they're gonna crawl into the ground and make a little cocoon or pupa down underneath the soil column."
All three counties are being affected by different species of caterpillars. In Garrett County, it's the fall cankerworm (Alsophila pometari), and in Allegany and Washington Counties they are is getting hit by the half wing geometer (Phigalia titea), linden looper (Erannis tilaria), as well as the fall cankerworm (Alsophila pometari).
The caterpillars will begin their pupation stage mid-June.
