Japanese beetles can cause serious damage to your landscape, feeding on the leaves and flowers of your plants, causing defoliation, deterioration and possibly death. Female Japanese beetles lay eggs in your lawn, which hatch as new grubs. These grubs feed on the roots of your grass plants, damaging large areas of your turf.

Description:
Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) adults are about 13 mm in length and easily identified by their bright, metallic green head and thorax, metallic brown to copper wings tinged with green edges and six tufts of white hairs along either side of the abdomen. The Japanese beetle grubs are milky white, "C "-shaped grubs about 2 cm in length. The head is brown, and the body has three pairs of legs. The spines of Japanese beetle form a "V" shape.

Life Cycle:
Adults emerge from the soil in late June through mid-July, feeding actively in sunny locations for about 30-45 days. Beetles can fly up to 1.6 km; even flights of 8 km have been noted with a good wind. Beetles usually feed and mate during the morning and return to the soil in the late afternoon and evening.

Moisture is crucial to egg hatch and larval development. Eggs may be laid in poorly drained ground where loose soil allows for the easy deposition of eggs. Egg laying continues until late July and August. Eggs hatch in about two weeks. Eggs and larvae fail to develop under dry conditions. If there is adequate moisture, newly hatched grubs feed on fine roots in the soil. In drier or cultivated soils, grubs will be found lower in the soil.

In September, as soils begin to cool, grubs move deeper into the soil. As soils warm in the spring, grubs move to the surface to feed for 3-4 weeks before pupating in late May and early June.

Adult Feeding:
Adults Japanese Beetles feed on the upper surface of the foliage of most plants. Injured leaves eventually turn brown and die. Trees turn brown and become partially defoliated due to extensive feeding and they eat the fleshy tissues of fruits. Japanese Beetles most favored the following:
Fruits: apples, cherries, grapes, peaches, plums and blueberries.
Ornamentals: asparagus, beets, broccoli, rhubarb and sweet corn in vegetables; maples, birch, crabapples, roses, and linden.
Weeds: soybeans, alfalfa, clovers and corn in field and forage crops; and smartweed, crabgrass, ragweed and cattail in weeds.

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