Plum Fruit Moth Caterpillars Found Inside Victoria Plums — SkimNews
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- Claire Stares describes a challenging summer for her garden's fruit trees, with intense heat and lack of rain causing poor cropping, premature ripening, and pre-harvest drop on her apples and quince.
- Her Victoria plum tree bucks the trend — branches so heavily laden that several snapped under the weight.
- Biting into outwardly flawless plums revealed bitter, gritty flesh that was actually frass (insect excrement) from plum fruit moth (Grapholita funebrana) larvae, a species locally common in southern England.
- The moth's caterpillars hatch creamy-white with brown heads, flush pink as they mature, and bore into developing fruit to feed around the stone; affected plums show subtle external signs like slight misshaping and a globule of clear sap (gummosis) at the entry hole.
- Stares salvaged undamaged fruit for jam and consigned infested scraps to the compost bin, only to find a squirming mass of caterpillars had migrated onto the bin lid by morning.
- Standard advice is to remove all dropped and damaged plums and dispose of them well away from the tree to prevent the caterpillars from pupating and perpetuating the cycle.
Why it matters: Plum fruit moth is locally common in southern England and can render outwardly perfect-looking fruit unusable from the inside; affected plums show only subtle external signs — slight misshaping and a bead of sticky sap — meaning gardeners and consumers may not detect infestation until the fruit is bitten into or cut open.
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