This cerambycid (longhorn beetle) is unlike our other native cerambycids in that it attacks healthy, living trees, where as our other natives typically help decompose dying or dead trees. And aside from attacking its name sake, the apple tree, it also attacks cherry, hawthorn, crap crab apple, and mountain ash.

The adult beetles are nocturnal and I found this one at my porch light last night and saved him for a photo op this morning Its not the adults that really do the damage to the trees, its the larvae that feed on the cambial tissue and bore into the heartwood . Too bad they are so charismatic looking and yet so pesty. I wish the bad pest insects actually looked like monsters because I liked him.

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