The Ash Tree Lives.......and the Cicadas Too.

The ash tree in my backyard was very slow to put out leaves this spring.  I was convinced that it had gotten the ash bore and was dead.  As you can see it is very much alive.  The preventative cycle in our state and surrounding states it to go ahead and cut it down.  I guess the philosophy is that get a new tree started as it is going to eventually die anyway.

It is crawling with locusts cicadas.  I guess the 17 year locusts cicadas lay their eggs in the bark of the tree.  The eggs grow some and fall to the ground as larvae.  The burrow down and live off of the roots of the tree for 17 years.  I have decided to shed my southern Iowa ignorance about the name.

We as southern Iowans don't have the benefits of higher education as there is out east.  Generations have called them locusts in the rural area as they are invasive just like the locusts of grasshoppers. It is a common language thing as everyone calls them locust but they are not locust.  I have decided that the locust we had in the fall each year while growing up are also not locusts either but they too are cicadas.  Anyway I hope I live out the next few years corrected even though they were always called locusts in my neck of the woods all of my life.