The Japanese Beetle: A Gardener’s Reference

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By Brad Sylvester

Popillia japonica, commonly known as the Japanese beetle, can do a tremendous amount of damage to your flower and vegetable gardens and, surprisingly, to your lawn as well. Those nasty white grubs that you find whenever you dig around in your lawn are Japanese beetle larvae. The beetle larvae grow to about an inch in length. These grub worms eat the roots of grass and can do tremendous damage. Not only do the Japanese beetle grubs kill the grass directly by chewing through the roots, but this damage weakens the resistance of the grass that does survive to such disease as milky spore. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the Japanese Beetle and its larva do in excess of $450 million dollars worth of damage every year in the United States.

2008, Brad Sylvester