The Chicago Botanical Garden is dealing with an unwanted and “crazy” pest nearly a year after its discovery—the second ever confirmed case of this unique critter in Illinois—and the garden says the creature is spreading on a “path of destruction.”
The amynthas agrestis, also known as the crazy or jumping worm, was initially discovered on the garden grounds about a year ago, according to a blog post by Tom Tiddens, the garden’s supervisor of plant health care. The worm proves problematic for plants because they push other common earthworms out of the environment, multiply quickly and eat up the soil’s organic matter. The change in the soil’s structure has a dramatic impact on the ecosystem from forests to decorative plants.
“Our discovery of crazy worm last year was the second confirmed find in the state of Illinois; the first find was in DuPage, only one day before ours,” Tiddens said in an email Wednesday. “Since then there have been more confirmed discoveries in Illinois; they now found in 3 counties (Cook, DuPage, and McHenry). Once this critter moves into a new area it becomes a perennial pest with few management options other than tolerance. It has the potential to change the dynamics of our forests, and also will impact gardeners.”
Tiddens detailed the find in a 2015 blog post for the garden.
“At first look, I thought nothing of it—maybe it was increased surface worm activity from all the rain,” Tiddens wrote in the post. “A couple of weeks later, they were still very active, and the groundcover was actually floating on worm castings! We rolled it up to expose many worms.”
The garden’s senior ecologist identified the slimy little invaders as “crazy worms” and noted that they had never been found in Illinois.
The blog post goes on to detail how gardeners and other dirt-diggers can identify the invasive species. Tiddens says they respond when touched “with a crazy flipping and jumping reaction,” have a “milky white flat band (clitellum),” are about 4 to 8 inches long and last but not least—it may lose its tail when picked it up.
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Tiddens says if you find the crazy worm you should report it to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources or the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
There are currently no recommended treatments for managing the crazy worm.
“It is thought that they may actually be more widespread than we think,” Tiddens said Wednesday. “Also, this is the time they are most noticed, as their populations in late summer are at their highest (adults do not survive our winters, but their eggs do; so a positive limiting factor).”
