Rats Ringbark Trees

02 Jul

Posted By kristi 0 Comment(s) 27 View(s) Plant Pests and Ways to Control Them , Horticultural Bits , General Interest

First published 2nd July 2026

Did you know that rats ringbark trees?

I did not until very recently, when discovering this young fig late one evening, bark stripped and even the top of the trunk, which had growing leaves, removed:

And this other nearby fig, again with both terminal trunks and leaves bitten clean off, but also with the nodes completely chewed out:

For several reasons related to the trees’ sizes and where they were, I just knew that the only thing/s that could have done this was a rat/s. But I had never ever heard of this. I showed those photos to my vastly experienced 84 year-old local pal who has been here much longer than we have, and he thought it was a deer! But I knew that was nigh on impossible, by virtue of where these two were.

The next day, I found this lime stripped:

…and this lemon…

Oh man was I seeing red by then!

I truly barely could believe this was rats myself, and people with even more years of experience than me could not believe it either. But it was the only animal which made sense.

So I went looking for evidence.

Just look at the utter devastation done to this bloke’s lemon tree. This is a well-established and mature tree, completely stripped from the ground right to the top of the, what, approximately 2 m high top foliage? Words fail me.

And this Melbourne fellow’s lime tree — who would have thought the need to protect such large branches?

I had been slacking off with the baiting, and had never thought to put any in this area before now anyway — that soon changed!

I didn’t find any more damage in that area after that, BUT the next day, around mid-afternoon, I discovered that in a different area, some of my young jujube trees had been ringbarked! If I saw red before, I was well past livid by now.

What we did is described in this next post.

Tags: potpourri,

Short Bio

Kristi Ellinopoullos
BSc(Hons), U.Syd. - double major in biochemistry and microbiology, with honours in microbiology
PhD, U.Syd - soil microbiology
Stumbled into IT and publishing of all things.
Discovered jujube trees and realised that perhaps I should have been an agronomist…
So I combined all the above passions and interests into plant-related websites and blogs, on which I write about plants, gardening, botany, soil chemistry, soil microbiology and biochemistry!

If you have any deep interest in microbiology and/or biochemistry, and how these apply to plants, I’m writing a deep-dive online book From Soil to Fruit here.