Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

by Douglas W. Tallamy

Lest you think that Japanese beetles are another exceptional case that would have been detected in time had they been imported on nursery stock today, think again. Three additional turf pests, all closely related to the Japanese beetle and all introduced accidentally on nursery stock after the Japanese beetle, have established themselves in the East and are beginning their westward expansion. Exomala orientalis, the oriental beetle (Cowles 2003), and Maladera castanea, the Asiatic garden beetle (Nielsen 1989), both look a lot like the Japanese beetle, although neither is as colorful. Rhizotrogus majalis, the European chafer, not to be confused with the native rose chafer (Nielson 1992), more closely resembles a small June beetle. As with the Japanese beetle, these three species entered the country unnoticed, despite our best intentions to screen them out.