Last year the flowering of the Silver linden brought hundreds of Japanese beetles which were apparently attracted to the sickly sweet smell of the flowers. This year I have only seen a single beetle so far and it was on the Edith Bogue Magnolia flower. I'm hoping this means a smaller infestation of beetles this year.
6 comments:
Love the colors in your picture. Had to chuckle to myself as it reminded me of a Prom Dress my Mom made be in HS. Was a brown velvet top much like the brown in the picture of the Linden, but the bottom was a light pink as is almost visible in your picture just at the top edges of a couple of petals.
As for the Japanese beetles………………………;(
HA but that is another memory and actually a fun memory!
Now you got me thinking back on proms. Our class was revolutionary and egalitarian. It was decided that the guys would wear suits not tux's and the girls would wear nice dresses instead of gowns because we lived in a fairly rural and poor area. Well, what was well intentioned turned out to be more expensive. Who owned a suit? We all had to go out and buy one when rented a tux would have been much, much cheaper. And the girls all came in gowns anyway.
I've only seen 3 Japanese beetles so far this year! Must be some kind of a record. One on the magnolia, one on a calla lily and I can't remember where the other was. Absolutely NO fun memories of JB's here!
We have a wonderful linden tree, it is not in bloom yet but the weather over the next several days is supposed to hot and humid, that usually brings the flowers out, they are so fragrant, wonderful scent. Lovely photos!
Hi Iowa Gardening Woman,
Last year the Japanese beetles were all over the linden flowers. I was afraid the tree actually attracted the beetles from the whole neighborhood! But this year either the tree bloomed early or the beetles are late so we don't have the same nightmare scenario, thank heavens. I find the smell kind of stinky but almost all the other comments I've read were from people that like the sweet smell like you do. I wonder if yours is a different variety of tree?
As soon as my tree blooms Ki, I will take some pictures. They should be in bloom soon, it seems like the heat and humidity bring on the blooms and we sure have that going on right now.
Hi IGW,
I'll have to walk around the neighborhood to see if I can spot linden trees about to bloom. I want to see if the later blooming ones have a better smell. As I mentioned before the Silver Linden has a sickly sweet smell not to my liking but others have commented that their lindens had a very nice perfume. I'd be interested to see how the flower of yours compares with the one I posted.
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