Curled leaves on Ficus

[8MadDog8]

Hi All,

Been getting something thats deciding to annoy my figs. There are a whole lot of leaves that are curled up with what looks to be a web of some sorts.

IMG_20120718_165004.jpg

Not sure if this is doing it, but found this guy yesterday:

IMG_20120718_165137.jpg

Does anyone know what is doing this? And more specifically, how to kill it?

Cheers

[Paulneill]

I have seen plenty of these little caterpillers they spin web . i just pull the curled leaves of. i think that they hatch out in a leaf and eat only a few leaves. i have found them on all sorts of trees.

[shibui]

It's probably a leaf curling caterpillar. Some spin webs to hold the leaf together for a safe place to hide from predators. They usually come out at night to feed. You will often find the grub inside the rolled leaf but they do have a tengency to drop out the bottom when the leaf is disturbed.
Pick them off or use dipel as a low toxic control.

[Tony Bebb]

Hi MadDog

Just some caterpillars mate, and they won't eat much unless there are plenty of them. You can just let them do there thing if it is a stock plant if you want natural ecology, but if they get carried away, squash the shoot with your fingers to squash the caterpillar as they will be inside, and cut the shoot off. Throw them in a bag, seal it, and chuck it. If you need to spray, most Pyrethrum based sprays will kill caterpillars on contact, so you just need to get inside the web.

Won't kill or significantly harm the tree.

Tony