Vine weevil

What you see

Adults are dull black, 9 mm, flightless, with a short snout, active only at night. The damage giveaway is neat semicircular notches bitten out of leaf edges. The larvae are creamy C-shaped grubs with orange heads, in the root ball.

Damage

Notched leaf margins on shrubs and strawberries. Then, suddenly, a potted plant wilts and dies for no visible reason - lift it and the roots have simply gone.

Lifecycle on this coast

One generation. Adults are all female and lay hundreds of eggs from late spring; the grubs eat roots through autumn and winter, doing their worst damage while the plant is dormant.

When to act

Notching alone is cosmetic. Any pot plant that wilts inexplicably should be tipped out and inspected immediately.

Months: April, May, June, July, August, September, October

Plants it bothers

Strawberry, Camellia, Hydrangea, Blueberry, Rose, Grape

Natural enemies

Nematodes (Steinernema), Ground beetle, Bird, Toad

Remedies

Encourage predators

The thing people get wrong

The adults you might catch at night are a nuisance; the grubs in the compost are the killers, and they do their work invisibly from October to March. If you grow anything valuable in pots, a nematode drench in September is the one treatment that matters - by the time the plant wilts in spring, the roots are already gone.