hair, tent caterpillars are pretty common here too -- they don't just eat Black cherry, tho that seems their favorite.

Gypsy moths, at least here, have declined greatly in numbers. I find a few, but a fungus that was deliberately introduced has spread out into the wild & is controlling their numbers. A success story for once.

I've seen the tent cats on mostly Black Cherry around here...and it seems they're done for the season as most of the trees are finally starting to show new leaf growth this last week or so.

Driving up I-95 in Prince George's and Howard Counties in Maryland, I saw a few very small areas where some oaks had nothing but skeletons left of leaves that looked full three days ago. Looks like there are a few small patches of the moths and they probably started their final instar feeding frenzy.

Overall though I haven't seen much, each patch was literally just two or three trees and it seemed to be almost exclusively pin oaks, the other reds and especially the whites seem unaffected...

It is not only likely, but almost a certainty, that prolonged wet wether in your area has decimated the population of GM caterpillars. That's what happens.

+oM

There are a few patches. In western Howard County along I-70, I did see two or three places where damage was evident. In all cases, it was maybe 2 or three adjacent oaks, that were 40% - 60% defoliated, just to the point where you could tell from a distance that something was wrong.

Other than that I've seen little evidence. It seems very isolated this year - the damage to the Wild Black Cherries from the tent cats was much more noticeable - and by now those trees have releafed out fully, although the leaves are smaller and lighter green than usual as of now.

hair, I see the same -- isolated patches of often just a few trees defoliated. Pretty sure these are Gypsy moth "outbreaks" -- there's no "tents" apparent. Back in the early 1980s those "patches" were scores of acres in size, or even whole mountainsides denuded before the fungus started working, around the early 1990s.

My Black cherries saw little damage & the crop looks promising. They're touchy, tho -- last yr a good-looking crop on healthy trees spontaneously aborted mid-season for no apparent reason. This isn't uncommon.

Ripe black cherries are sweet & strongly flavored. The ones here get up to 1/2" dia or even bigger. I've got a pic somewhere of ripe ones.

I saw a few more patches this Sunday, driving up 95 towards Delaware - there are a few large patches (maybe a few acres in size) in northern Baltimore county and in Harford Co...but still not the miles and miles of it I've seen in years past. In fact many of the defoliated trees I saw appeared to already have a second flush of leaves starting to push out.

Saw some more areas along 95 - it seems that for some reason, the damage follows I-95 and you don't see much of it on the state routes and rural roads.

Are they hitching rides on semi trucks? LOL...

MAYBE that it is drier, therefore less favorable for the fungus. With lots of open space, lots of air movement from the traffic, and lots of exposed concrete/asphalt, then I would expect it to drier and more difficult for a fungus.