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Things That Bug Us
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2019/03 - March
While Highlands is a botanical wonderland, bursting with buds, blooms, and colors that defy description, there is an occasional bug in the beauty. Three decades before World War II, an Eastern bomb, so to speak, dropped on America: the Japanese Beetle.
It sneaked in on iris bulbs at a New Jersey port in 1912, and by 1932 it locked its jaws on the North Carolina Piedmont, then bore down on the Western North Carolina mountains. It caused more trouble than previous invaders, the Boll Weevil and Mexican Bean Beetle.
In the 1950s another army of insects marched in. Balsam Woolly Aphids burrowed into Mount Mitchell’s Fraser Firs. In just seven years the woolly beasts sucked the life out of over a quarter-million trees, leaving weathered, wooden bones to bleach on desecrated peaks. The bugs hit as forests were attempting a comeback from the Chestnut Blight (a fungus, not an insect) of the mid 1920s.
It’s a wonderful life being a mighty tree, living in the Carolina elements, rooted in rich clay, showing its face to the morning sun and sweet spring rain. But it’s a perilous life when an army of ravenous, six-legged gluttons descends upon it and there’s nowhere to run … even if it had limbs to do so.
Dogwood and Hemlock trees also took a hit in recent times, the Dogwood from acid rain and the Hemlock from the tiny Woolly Adelgid, the size of the dot of an i.
There has been some success in combating bug armies. In the 1990s the Asian Gypsy Moth descended upon the conifers in the Highlands area, but a spray from the air blocked the infestation.
The Highlands Biological Station has been instrumental in protecting the Plateau from pests, in ways you might never hear about, but it’s hard at work keeping us green and bad-bug free.
To learn more about the things that bug us or things that bring us joy, read Ran Shaffner’s “Heart of the Blue Ridge,” borrowable at local libraries or purchase-able through the Highlands Historical Society online at highlandshistory.com or email [email protected]. The Highlands Historical Society will be open for visits beginning Memorial Day weekend, or earlier.
