Working with the Royal Horticultural Society to map non-native pests
In March 2009, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) joined forces with the NBN to encourage UK gardeners to help map some non-native pests that cause serious damage to popular garden plants.
Plants such as Hemerocallis (daylily), lily, rosemary and berberis are coming under increasing attack from insect enemies. The RHS science department submitted over 4,000 location records of four non-native pests that had been collected via the Royal Horticultural Society’s Advisory Service (predominantly from RHS members) and from the general public via on-line recording forms on the RHS website.
The pests: Lily beetle, Lilioceris lilii; Rosemary beetle, Chrysolina americana; Hemerocallis gall midge, Contarinia quinquenotata and Berberis sawfly, Arge berberidis. This information is helping to establish the distribution and spread of these garden pests since their arrival in Britain.
Information on the four invasive garden pests helps us to track distribution changes and helps the RHS to improve advice provided to gardeners as well as enabling assessments of the threat that these non-natives pose in the garden and the wider environment.
Data will be submitted from the RHS on a regular basis to the NBN.
See the RHS dataset here