Thanks, Wayne! I truly believe JB ,and probably most other insects, have definite preferences. For example, JB don't like lemon basil. I'm sure they'd eat it if there was nothing else around, but in my garden the lemon basil is planted right next to the sweet genovese type, and both are equally healthy stands. The regular basil is full of Japanese beetles, the lemon basil, not 4 inches away, has nary a beetle. Years ago I noticed that slugs prefer certain lettuces (bibb types being the fav), and aren't crazy about red lettuce. So I began planting red lettuces around the other lettuces like a fence. It worked! By the way, I'm feeling a bit guilty that krikit's thread got off her /his specific topic. I hope you've found something helpful, krikit! Best of luck.

I got this same thing on a sweet cherry tree and end up chopping it down, of course it is growing out of the side of the trunk, I decided I will let it live and see if I can treat it so the avoid that nasty soot. I noticed I have alot of lady bugs on my roses and they eat those suckers. My crapes last year got black spot. I guess crapes and roses are strongly related?? I am trying a garlic, water and milk mixture to fight the fungus and bugs (I am guessing they hate the taste of garlic since they never touch any of my garlic plants. When I spray the leaves of my roses it seems to deter the bugs not sure just yet just experimenting. japanesse beetles dont' seem to be a problem, one year they showed themselves but didn't last long and didn't do much damage to anything. some people just use a strong spray of the hose to get rid of the aphids they can't climb back up once they are knocked off. I have alot of acrage and birds galore I am sure they eat the bugs and that is why I seldom have a problem with them, yet. RR

I don't know rhizo. VPI seems to spell it as "crape myrtle" in most of it's posts on the web. My search turned up three times more VPI/crape myrtle links than VPI/crapemyrtle links. Here's just the first few examples: http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/envirohort/426-701/426-701.html http://www.hort.vt.edu/mastergardener/countyfaqstats.htm http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/monthlytips/november/notenovt.html http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/plantdiseasefs/450-616/450-616.html Then I found a bunch of US National Arboretum documents with "crape myrtle". A few had both "crapemyrtle" and "crape myrtle" in the same document! Their homepage ( http://www.usna.usda.gov/ ) uses "crape myrtle". And, I've never noticed, but Dirr doesn't seem to be able to make his mind up either, if the rule he's using is like the one to which you allude. He uses firstname-secondname most commonly, but also uses firstnamesecondname and firstname secondname frequently also. Just a very few examples of the firstname secondname scheme in his writings: Indian Cherry is not a Prunus Oregon Cedar is not a Cedrus Stinking Cedar is not a Cedrus Mountain Holly is not a Ilex Poison Ivy is not a Hedera Tulip Magnolia is not a Magnolia and the list could go on and on. Hortus III does use "crape myrtle". I totally agree with you that "it is a common name, after all and subject to all kinds of variations," but some of us have to have something to talk about in our spare time when we are procrastinating doing the things we should be doing. (-:

There's a photo of the bloom of Carlos Lantana on Grower's Outlet website. You can click on the latin name on the Availability link page for photos of most of the things they sell. They have several varieties of lantana for $1.00 each this weekend. I was there today. They have many, but in very small pots and are only a rooted cutting. They are not labeled, so you need to know what the photo looks like so you get what you want. Or just buy one of each color combination, like I did. (Bought so much I'll be planting for a month.) Some are quite long and leggy. Prune it shorter and root what you cut. www.growersoutlet.com http://www.growersoutlet.com/pages/availability.html Grower's outlet is closing for the summer on Sunday, June 13 (this weekend). Opens again for the fall on August 19. Here is a link that might be useful: Grower's Outlet card with photo of Carlos bloom