Oh dear! I had not heard of these jumping worms from Asia. Another invasive and destructive species from another country! And the damage it may eventually rack up sounds pretty serious!

Florida has been dealing with so many invasive species of creatures as well as the very invasive Brazilian Pepper Tree and other vegetation, that to hear about these jumping worms makes me hope they stay away from my state. I don't want them here! Ugh!

For a quick and fun education about Jumping Worms, take a look at this great "claymation" video: http://ulster.cce.cornell.edu/...

But how can you identify them? I can see that they're larger than wrigglers, but aside from that, is there any other way?

OH MY!!! Another something that can change our lives forever to watch for.

Hopefully some species of birds will find them and devour them !

Interesting. Not heard of this, very sad. Here in the PNW there are a few popular plantsmen that go on expeditions into Vietnam, China and other country's bring back with them seeds and cuttings. They go through inspection but I've often wondered if they will bring in a invasive plant for the PNW. Very knowledgeable group but still things happen. Thanks for the article.

Thank you for this information,, who would have thought : . How can we tell by looking at a worm what kind it is? and do these worms move differently than a regular earth worm?
Thank you
Karen

I'd like to know the answer to that as well !
When I'm digging in my garden I find earth worms of all different sizes and just assume they're of different ages but all look alike color wise.
Some of them are really big and when disturbed they do "jump" around like crazy and flop all over the place, in which case I just put them back in the soil.

I have worms but I bought them from the horse guy locally. But I haven't seen him lately. My worms are small. But I can tell the difference between regular worms and my worms, they are fatter and only found in clay soil. The other worms you will not find them in clay soil. I think mine are red wrigglers. But this is alarming.

I did some googling and found there is another invasive worms, it's the hammer head. I think I've found this once or my previous garden. Luckily, I got rid of my plants when I moved. I'm not allow to post the link, but you can google giant predatory worms from Asia are invading France.

Most gardeners in the area that the jumping worms have found in have never heard of them. I know in both Minnesota and Wisconsin the DNR and Universities are trying to get the word out. They have been found from New England into Minnesota.
They are called different names Crazy worms,snake worms, Asian worms and Alabama jumping worms are some examples.

They are different from regular earthworms. when you disturb them they jump and become so agitated they may lose their tails. The band they have circling their body is flatter (smooth) and much lighter in color then regular earthworms.That band also is closer to their head.

Regular night crawlers hibernate several feet down in winter. The jumping worm hatches from a cocoon in the spring. It lives til fall when it dies leaving behind egg cases for the next spring. The worms are asexual, each worm can reproduce alone.

The worms may swarm as hundreds may be found in one area of a garden. The soil in that affected area will have the texture of coffee grounds. Some worm have a enzyme called peroxidase that allow them to eat the fibers in wood mulch. They are very hard to eliminate once in the garden. The recommended thing is to remove all the worms you can find. Remove all affected soil put into garage bags to be disposed of in the trash. A humane way to kill is to lay the bag in the sun so the heat will build and the worms die. Then put them in the trash. Chemical treatments may kill adults but the egg cases are hard to get rid of once they are in a area.

They are usually introduced to a area in compost or wood mulch. Be careful when getting plants from unknown sources.
Be very careful buying plants ,look at potted plants carefully. I remove the plant from the pot in a dish pan so no contaminated soil or worms can fall into my garden. Tell other gardeners so more people know to look for the worms. Buy bare root plants if possible. Soak roots and watch for worms floating out. Daylilies can be soaked in a bleach/water mix. I used a 5% bleach solution to soak the daylilies roots after I bought them at our daylily society sale. Some people who donated plants said they had hundreds of worms float off the roots when they treated the plants before bringing them to be sold. The daylilies looked fine after the bleach bath.

I don't have them in my garden. I never want to deal with the nightmare of trying to get rid of them as they are killing my plants. It seems there is always one more thing hoping to ruin my garden. I have a couple dozen rabbits, pesky chipmunks, hungry squirrels,and deer now

I wish I hadn't read this. D e p r e s s i n g ! Now I'm paranoid.

I came back to clarify. Even though I find this extremely disturbing, it is good for people to know about these things. We could all stand to be a little more paranoid concerning the environment.

Didn't mean to shut the thread down!

I killed a few worms recently that look neither like earth worms nor red wrigglers. Yes, I'm paranoia.

SoCal, when you find something like this, you should take a picture and post it here. Someone will probably be able to ID it for you. You can drop one into a mason jar and then bring it inside, dump it onto a piece of paper, take the picture, and then...SQUISH!!! Once it's ID'ed, you won't have to worry.

It was going very fast, this is the second one I saw, much different than the rest. It was kind of thrashing too. Has a white band. My regular red wrigglers have no white band. I did buy some roses recently that came with dirt from SC. It was long and looks like the picture in the jumping worms thread. I have bark as mulch, like wood to them.

SoCal, here is a video of jumping worms. You can see them and their behavior quite clearly. Judging from the movements of the person in the video, I don't think it's sped up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

@marysp for the article and @joannakat for posting this video.

I read the comments and found that they have also been found here in Texas:
"As of June 2019, these have now been positively identified in Texas, specifically Tarrant County in the Northeast sectors of North Richland Hills and Keller, Texas"

And another: 1 month ago
"Just found 1 tonight I'm in Austin"

I'm so concerned about these worms. We have so many bad bugs here in Texas, and earth worms were the one ally I could count on. Now, I need to look out for these bad guys in addition to the bad bugs.

Well Sue, at least now, you know what they look like. Hopefully, you'll never find any, and neither will any of us. What a nightmare!

Sue, this PDF includes a method for finding out if you have them in your soil on page 2. It might help you to sleep better to do this once or twice a year. It's linked in the article you mentioned, but just in case you haven't yet read it, here it is.

http://ccetompkins.org/resourc...