(I have also posted this in the tree forum) Two years ago we had a very late freeze after all of my trees, except for the beech, had leafed out and last year we had the 17 year cicadas. To my surprise the cicadas seem to have done far more damage to some of my trees than the late frost did.

All of my 4-8' japanese maples, kousa dog woods, stewartia and american holly have significant damage with many losing over 50 percent of their branches.

I have a 7' x 7' 'Gold Star' kousa that is almost dead and several others that will look terrible for years to come.

It seems like the cicadas damage the plant's smaller branches enough to cause desiccation of the branch. Because the cicadas like pencil size wood only smaller trees seem to have been effected to this degree. Very small younger plants and plants with thin banches such as acer palmatum Murasaki Kiyohime were also unharmed by the cicadas.

Did any one else see a similar pattern of damage?

David