I had the same thing happen in a 17-year cycle here back in 03 or 04. Over a hundred new trees all chewed up. I would prune out all the damaged wood, even if that means there is only a trunk and a couple stubs left. Overall it will set you back a year but look on the bright side the trees are alive and their rootstocks continue to develop. Scott

DON'T cut it off. I've had canes survive three years with that sort of cicada damage. After three years, I'd see a bit of fungal effects at the base of the cut. One of the reasons for this is that the cicada cuts on the underside of a cane, so water doesn't get in there. So very little externally caused rot. I would tie the cane up, give it a bit of help, but when I had the bad cicada damage, I didn't do anything, and the canes survived. (17 year cicadas are a different problem. They make a series of offset cuts and they are made so the cane WILL break there, the same year.)

That was an expression of sympathy for my loss - thank you, lisanti, for that. :) The tree is about four feet tall. It does appear that, so far, the bottom half isn't affected. Dan, curious: Have you ever lived through a brood emergence? Not just a couple of annual cicadas sprinkled about - I'm talking a full-scale emergence for six or so weeks. The only person in this city who seems to be enjoying it is the entomologist with the County Extension Office. He's having a ball (but even he complains about all the dead bodies and discarded shells). It is universally agreed upon to be a huge nuisance. I have seen them in drug stores and grocery stores. They get into your car. Your home. If you dare to bust out a weedeater, you'll be covered with them in seconds. There is a layer of discarded shells an inch thick (not exaggerating) under some trees and shrubs. The noise is deafening - Vanderbilt released a story the other day about potential long-term effects on hearing. Dead bodies crunch under your feet everywhere you go. And now, they're eating my Chalk Bark Maple. Freakin' cicadas is exactly right. Twelve more days...twelve more days...

Yes, to be fair to the cicadas, I do feel that they are beneficial and really something pretty "wondrous" because they are so very strange, but I had so many and the noise they made was so intense that after a couple of weeks of them they became a distint nuisance. And they did seem to favor the rhodies in my yard for some strange reason (they were supposed to 'prefer' the oak and ash trees, but thousands (and I do NOT exaggerate here) only made it onto my rhodies. I'm still not convinced that I've got weevils...with this much damage I'd have to see the occasional bug or find the larvae in the ground and I have never seen either. The "cuts" and notches are NOT made by an insect...the brown spot gets dry (like paper) and then falls out...leaving the notch on the leaf. If you don't observe this as it happens you would think that an insect chomped the leaf, but if you observe the process from when the spots first appear and then watch the leaf over time you actually see it dry up, get hard and then drop away (and it leaves an ever so faint brown "edge" around the notch or cut too. Anyway, didn't mean to diss the cicadas; I actually liked them (up to a point) and after all it doesn't happen but once every 7 (or was it 10?) years so its no biggie but I had read that when they come out in such numbers as Brood X did and they lay their eggs in young immature trees that it does sometimes stress and even kill them and I just wondered if that was perhaps what happened to my Rhodies (which are more like trees than shrubs). I had lots of fun observing the cicadas from their emergence to their rather messy end and took lots of photos of the entire process. Part of their "strategy" in coming out in such massive numbers is that predators quickly become sated and can no longer eat them and I observed this first hand. . The toad was so sated that he completely ignored this "scrumptious" little morsel! Longlocks