Had friend tell me about a type of caterpillar that is stripping 100's if not 1000's of acres of mesquites. Taking off all the green leaf material on them. Said they look like mesquites in the dead of winter after hard freeze. Anyone from the areas seeing this?

I was there Saturday. Plenty of healthy green mesquite.

One of the ranches that has them is south of Seymour toward Throckmorton in the northern part of the county.

I was just east of Throckmorton.

Idrove through there today and the mesquites looked plenty green.

Have a Buddy in Gordon and also a place in Santo and he said he's losing some to Cankerworms...but not that bad that I have heard of

So do these worms/caterpillars kill the mesquite? Not many things can kill those devils.

I hunted in Archer County and saw grasshoppers doing that twice in 6 years.

I have seen this in the past and they only stripped the foliage, the tree came back just fine.

The only caterpillar that is going to kill mesquites comes on tracks. Throckmorton mesquites are alive and well.

If there is a bug that does. OP please tell me where to find it

I drove through there this past weekend along 380. I saw on one side of the road where all the mesquites were dying and the other side most were still green. I just assumed they had been sprayed.

Good to see you back on the forum Stx, missed your input.

Could be some bad hail areas also???

No this was caterpillars. The guy on the ranch seen them eating the leaves off the trees. He said they eat only the leaf material and not the stems. Not going to kill them just eat all the leaves off. They had stripped a lot on his place and the ranches next to him. Not sure if he has highway frontage or not.

That's scary I always thought mesquite trees and cockroaches were the only two things that would survive nuclear war.

I just contacted my sister in Throckmorton. It is called the mesquite cutworm.

Might at least slow down growth.

We oughta raise them.

I wish but don't really think it will. I planted 4 Live Oaks in my yard 2.5 yrs ago now. Last fall in November a caterpillar started stripping the leaves off of them. Few caterpillars at first then all of a sudden all the leaves were gone in 2 days and hundreds of caterpillars on the trees and in the lawn. I walked out front one morning and all the leaves were gone. They only hit one other native Live Oak close to the house that was smaller. No other tree I saw on the place was like that. I sprayed and killed all of them in that tree and on the other few leaves on the new Live Oaks. Those trees did not put any new leaves on till late Feb. Then in May and June with all the rains they looked to now have doubled in canopy size. I guess they went dormant for that time period.

I saw something very similar to this along 114 on the east side of Seymour last weekend.

All of our big mesquites are being stripped and are very yellow.
I was wondering what causes it. A worm makes sense because if you are under one of the sick trees you will have a bunch of little black balls on you. Probably worm poop.
I have a yard full of huge mesquites, basically all of our shade. I hope this doesn't kill them.
I know we have at least 3 that are over 100 years old.

Mesquite cutworm. Geez, Louise.