Note 101 — Chapter III · THE VITICULTURE OF NEW YORK

The grape-vine fidia (Fidia viticida Walsh) is a robust beetle, a quarter of an inch in length, brown in color but whitened by a thick covering of yellowish-white hairs. The beetle lays its eggs in the cracks and crevices of the bark of the grape vines well above ground. The eggs are produced in large numbers, often as many as several hundred to the vine. Upon hatching, the larvae quickly worm their way into the ground and begin to feed upon the fibrous roots of the vine, passing from these to the larger roots. Possibly the chief damage is done on the larger roots which are often entirely stripped of bark for a length of several feet. The larvae attain their full size, a half inch in length, by the middle of August, and then hibernate until the following June. The winter is spent in earthen cells. After about two weeks as pupae in June, the full grown beetles emerge from the ground and begin to feed upon the upper surface of the leaves, eating out the cellular tissue, thus skeletonizing the foliage. The adults disappear the succeeding August. The most efficient means of checking the fidia so far found is an application of an arsenical spray applied during the time the beetles are feeding on the foliage.