Trees Are Key

It's summer and the crapemyrtles are in full bloom, the new cherry laurels are growing by leaps and bounds…then you turn the corner and see that and the Italian cypress looks a little off, not as green as they should be. It can’t be drought, it’s been such a wet year so far… As you get closer, you notice a fine webbing around the most discolored sections of the trees. Following the hint, you hold a white piece of paper under a few discolored limbs and flick the branches with your finger. A bunch of dark specks land on the paper. You wait a moment and see the dark spots start to scurry around. Bingo! You’ve got spider mites… now what?

Species Spotlight

The Honey locust Gleditsia triacanthos is a deciduous Texas native, a large tree with a trunk diameter of 30" and a height of 80 feet or more. The trunk, branches, and twigs have strong, sharp, brown thorns, either straight or branched, which form on the one-year-old wood and remain for many years.