It can also survive on hawthorn, wild plum, and crab apple. The plum curculio is usually more abundant on fruit trees adjacent to woods, fencerows, and trashy fields. Several types of damage occur. Damage to peaches include crescent-shaped scars on the fruit from egg laying activity of adults early in the spring or bumps from feeding injury that protrude from the fruit at harvest. Heavily damaged fruit may be gnarled, knobby, and scarred.
Internal injury is caused by larvae tunneling throughout the fruit.
Most fruit damaged in this way will drop to the ground by June. Premature dropping of fruit during May, June or even later in the season is often the result of larval activity within the fruit or adult feeding on the fruit. These punctures are characterized by small holes in the skin of the fruit and may have a hollowed-out cavity extending into the flesh. In addition to these three direct forms of injury, plum curculio adults can inadvertently infect fruit with spores of brown rot fungus. In the spring, plum curculio adults leave their overwintering quarters in trash on the ground, woodlots, or hedgerows, and migrate to fruit trees.