Pest Notes: Vol. 7 - South American Palm Weevil in Orange County and Inland Empire
As we enter the new year, new areas are being discovered by the South American Palm Weevil.
Arborists have been scanning the Canary Island date palms that dapple the beach front of San Onofre for years.
We would pass, glaring through car windshields with a phone in hand, in hopes of capturing a photo of that infamous weevil-infested palm ready to send it off to our Arborist buds.
Earlier in 2025, word started passing around that a well-known private real estate development and investment company found a South American Palm Weevil at one of their Orange County properties. The word was: keep it hush hush!
Nothing for a while…
All of a sudden, in the middle of the summer, seminars were being held to discuss a plan of action and bring awareness to the fact that the South American Palm Weevil had in fact made its way to Orange County.
TreeLife began to receive positive reports of infestations, photos, locations, etc., through the remainder of 2025.
And now, today, you can pass by San Onofre and find a couple of weevil-positive palms.
Ghastly times we live in…
Similarly, as the weevil hops from palm to palm northward through San Marcos to Fallbrook, it will begin spreading through the Inland Empire.
What do we do?
Well, we provide the right information and appropriate treatment options, allowing an owner to make an educated decision. These palms are extremely costly and, to owners, can define business and living spaces. We maintain palms that were planted by grandfathers and grandsons, grandmothers and granddaughters.
Canary Island date palms hold cultural, personal and even biblical significance. Father Junipero Serra brought the first Canary Island date palms to San Diego in the 18th century, which reportedly survived at his first Mission, at the center of what became Old Town San Diego, until 1957.
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“Father Serra had no idea that there were native palms in California. Canary Island palms were a locally-available Spanish variant of the familiar palms of Holy Week, the palms of the martyrs of Rome, the palms brandished by “Hosanna!”-shouting crowds at the Entry Into Jerusalem. That palm was native to North Africa, and carried by the Phoenicians all around the Ancient Mediterranean World, from Persia to Spain. The Greeks thus named it after the boat people from Canaan and Carthage, Phoenix dactylifera, the Phoenician finger-bearing palm. (“Dates” are “dactyls,” swallowing the c, y and l. They looked like fingers to the Greeks.)”
