Scales are notorious in killing plants and interestingly, many people are still not aware of them.
How do you locate them?
Like any pest, Meally bugs and Scale insects like to target soft tissues or areas like nodes because that is where new growth is found. A good example is this agave which has a severe infestation of scales. They are on the nodes and the tips where growth and nutrients are abundant. Look what it does to the plant.
How to they damage plants?
Meally bugs and Scale insects cause damage by sucking the juice from plants. The leaves on plants can turn yellow until it drops. It also can weaken and stunt your plants’ growth. In some cases, plants can be killed.
They can also make fruits and flower buds to drop off prematurely. In a bad case of infestation, they can also encourage fungal development which complicate things.
There are two kinds of scale insects, the soft and the armored
How do they look like?
Mealy bugs is is among the soft scale insects and is the most common in household plants.
They are easy to spot though. They are tiny, pink, soft-bodied insects, covered with a white, waxy, cottony material. The white “fluff” coating that mealy bugs have protects them from heat and moisture loss. This also makes them repel water as protection which makes it harder to apply water-based contact insecticides.
What are the signs that I have mealy bugs?
Aside from their white powdery color, they leave a fuzzy, cotton like substance around the stems and leaf nodes. Some are concentrated on the growing tips while others are more scattered on other plants.
Ants are also a good indication that your plants might have mealy bugs. Mealy bugs secrete "honey dews" that ants collect as their source of food and in exchange, ants protect them too from other predators.
But How do Armored scale insects look like?
Armored scale insects, on the other hand, are small, oval, and flat. They are concealed underneath domed-like shell that protects them. Even though they do not secrete honey dews and barely moves, they have the same lethal capabilities as with mealy bugs. Looking out for them is easy. They look like brown/ to white tiny shells that sticks on the surface of the plant like bumps or bulges.
But How do Armored scale insects look like?
Armored scale insects, on the other hand, are small, oval, and flat. They are concealed underneath domed-like shell that protects them. Even though they do not secrete honey dews and barely moves, they have the same lethal capabilities as with mealy bugs. Looking out for them is easy. They look like brown/ to white tiny shells that sticks on the surface of the plant like bumps or bulges.
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