While cherry blossom viewing has taken off in recent years, few are aware that the flowering season is the period in which pests pose the most danger to the trees, Hsinchu County cherry farm owner Huang Cheng-hui (黃政慧) said.
Longhorn beetles — the most common pest — will usually burrow into the trunk and lay their eggs around the end of winter and the start of spring, Huang said.
While some farmers spray the roots with pesticide, Huang said pesticides could harm the environment if they are too strong and could lead to the beetles burrowing into a higher spot on the trunk, making them harder to exterminate.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsun, Taipei Times
Huang said he instead elects to patrol his farm more diligently, and scrapes off the tree gum created from gummosis, which is sometimes caused by beetle larvae burrowing deep into the trunk of a tree through a gash.
Huang’s worries were echoed by officials from the county’s Bureau of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Conservation, who said that gummosis could be caused by fungal diseases and called on farmers to check whether there are holes in the trunk, which might indicate visits from longhorn beetles.
If holes are discovered, farmers should inundate them with pesticide to remove the beetles, the officials said.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
The gum scraped from the trees should be removed from the area and preferably burned, the officials said, adding that this was to prevent the larvae from hatching after its removal, or — if caused by fungus — the disease spreading.
The officials suggested that farmers wrap the bases of the trees 1m high from the ground with non-woven fabric or black polymer sheets, which are usually used to prevent weed growth.
They also suggested that farmers remove all deadwood and fallen leaves from the area where the trees are growing because they are potential hotbeds for larvae, and added that some species of the beetle are attracted to light and could be removed by placing a light source under a mix of detergent and water.
Spraying the bases of the trees with pesticide four to five months after the first sighting of adult beetles could also prevent pests, they said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater