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AP Photo An Asian longhorned beetle is seen crawling on forester Brian Keevan in Worcester in August 2008. The destructive beetles native to China, which bore into trees and range in size from 1 to 1 1/2 inches long, last year also were found in Brookline.

HADLEY - Last July 4, while on a beach vacation with his family in Maine, arborist Tom Brady got a call that made him cut his holiday short. An infestation of the Asian longhorned beetle had been found in six red maples at Faulkner Hospital, across the street from Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum.

Brady immediately returned home to help manage a 10-square-mile quarantine of "a good portion" of the 60,000 trees under his jurisdiction as the tree warden and arborist for the town of Brookline. He said the quarantine would probably last at least three years, the time it will take to check every potentially infested tree - twice.

In 2008, Worcester was put under a similar quarantine, which now extends into a 94-square-mile area; almost 30,000 trees # two-thirds infested and another third at risk - have been destroyed to eradicate the pest. The quarantine means that firewood cannot leave the area and ground stumps must be removed 12 inches below grade.

"Hardwoods are (the beetle's) dinner of choice," Brady said. That includes red, silver, and sugar maples, box elders, birches, elms, willows, horse chestnuts, ash and poplars. The beetle has not been associated with oak, cherry or crab-apple trees, and it "never touches" softwoods like pines, spruces or firs.

If not contained, an infestation of New England hardwoods could affect tourism as well as the maple sugar, timber and nursery industries, Brady said. The beetle kills trees slowly, but surely.

The invasive beetle, belonging to the insect family Cerambycidae, is about 1 ½ inches long, glossy black with white splotches and long white-banded antennae, Brady told an audience of about 25 Saturday afternoon at the Hadley Garden Center.

The life cycle of the beetle takes place mostly inside the tree, thereby making efforts to control the pest difficult. The adult beetle chews its way out of the tree, emerging in July, August or September. It digs a shallow depression in the bark about the size of a fingernail and lays an egg. When the egg hatches, the wormlike larva works its way inside the tree, beginning the cycle all over again.

Characteristically, it leaves behind a waste material that resembles sawdust, called "frass," which accumulates in the crook of branches and around the base of the tree.

The one bright note is that the beetles are lazy. "They don't like to fly or move very far," Brady said. The farthest they're known to travel is about a half mile, though they can crawl from one canopy to another.

"In Massachusetts, a concerned Worcester resident was on her back porch having a barbecue, when she thought she saw it," Brady said. The woman took some pictures of the insect with her cell phone and the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed it was the Asian longhorned beetle.

Before its discovery in Worcester, the beetle was first found in New York City in 1996, then in Chicago, New Jersey, Toronto and Staten Island.

Brady said the beetle probably hitchhiked here from China by way of wood packing crates and pallets. "It wasn't so long ago that we didn't fumigate packing materials," he said. In December 1998, the USDA began to require fumigation of pallets and crates coming into the country. The Worcester infestation is thought to predate 1998.

In Brookline, the hospital groundskeeper became suspicious when she noticed the insect's signature: a perfectly round, deep bore hole with a diameter slightly smaller than that of a dime.

"A plethora of insects are wood borers," said Brady. "But these beetles leave exit holes that are perfectly round, with a diameter slightly larger than a pencil. With other wood borers, you can insert a pencil in the hole about a quarter inch and no further," But with Asian longhorn beetles, a hole of an inch or more is not unusual.

"Eradication is very, very challenging," Brady said. "Once you see a bore hole, that tree is infested."

The hospital groundskeeper alerted the hospital arborist, and together they called a government hot line. State and federal authorities confirmed the infestation and instituted the quarantine.

The Brookline infestation probably came from Worcester in a load of firewood, perhaps in the back of a truck, Brady said. Some 36,000 trees have been checked in Brookline as of Oct. 31, with no more beetles found.

If you suspect an infestation of the Asian longhorned beetle call 1-866-702-9938.

For more information online, visit: www.massnrc.org/pests; www.dontmovefirewood.org; www.masstreewardens.org; www.beetlebusters.info; www.mass.gov/agr.