I want to tell you all up there in New England something about lilies. If you grow lilies, if your neighbors grow lilies, if your friends grow lilies, be aware and tell others that the red lily beetle has mostly been eradicated. However —and this is where we all need you your help – when you see a red lily beetle, let it be. Unless of course it is chomping away on your one single lily plant, but that’s really YOUR problem isn’t it? To have just one Lily would be very wrong. You need a row of lilies at minimum! Ha ha.
Anyway… We want to keep a small population of red lily beetle around in New England so that its newly introduced predators have something to feed on. The predator is some sort of larval predator. I don’t remember what it is. The red lily beetles were decimating lily collections in Canada and the Northeast, and it was heading West, my way.
The North American Lily Society along with others funded Research at one of the New England universities to identify this new predator and introduce it. It’s been very successful.
Keep it up New England!