Red Palm Weevil in Spain

The devastation of the date palm in Spain is horrifying.  For those of us who have or rather had palms on our properties the slow death is so sad to witness. An upright palm one day and then you notice a dropping of the fronds and more and more they droop. The worst thing is, that by the time you notice the drooping its too late! Our tree was fine one day and then one frond dropped. We asked a professional gardener to have a look and he treated it with some rather vicious chemicals but a month later we lost the whole tree really fast. We could actually hear the grubs munching their way through the centre of our palm.

The pest was first recorded in the northern United Arab Emirates in 1985, and since then it has spread to almost the entire U.A.E. (El-Ezaby 1998) and to Oman. In Iran, it was recorded in Savaran region in 1990 (Faghih 1996). Then it was discovered in Egypt at the end of November 1992 in El-Hussinia, Sharquiya region (Cox 1993). In 1994, it had been captured in the south of Spain (Barranco et al. 1996) and in 1999 had been found in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority Territories (Kehat 1999).

The cause of the high rate of spread of this pest is human intervention, by transporting infested young or adult date palm trees and offshoots from contaminated to uninfected areas.  Here in the Costa del Sol area the cause was most likely cheap palms from Morocco already infected and now its too late.

Rhynchophorus ferrugineus or red palm weevil belongs to the family of Curculionidae or Coleoptera. This beetle is between 2-5 cm long, and has a rusty red colour. The life cycle of the insect is about four months. Equipped with strong wings they are able to undertake long flights. Females lay about 300 eggs in separate holes. The eggs hatch in 2-5 days into legless grubs which bore into the interior of the palm and feed on the soft tissue of the tree. Damage to palms is produced mainly by the larvae. They reach a size of more than 5 cm before pupation and then move towards the interior of the palm making tunnels and large cavities. Usually the damage caused by the larvae only becomes visible long after infection. By the time the first symptoms of the attack appear they are so serious that they generally result in the death of the tree.