White bugs

[marcela]

hi all,
My garden and trees are infested with these things,have tried natural sprays as well as pest oil can't spray any heavy duty sprays as one of my dogs tends to eat the leaves off some of my english and chinese elms when he feels sick,so have been told to wait till weather changes in the meantime they are driving me crazy!!!
marcela

[Guy]

if not neem oil then perhaps pyrethrum

[gollum]

these are leaf hopper nymphs
also called plant hoppers


Both adults and nymphs feed by puncturing the undersides of leaves and stems and sucking out plant juices, leaving a mottled appearance. Their saliva is toxic causing some plants to react with severe leaf distortions, including warty, crinkled leaves, rolled edges, or stunted growth. Plants may have tipburn (also called "hopper burn" on potatoes) and yellowed, curled leaves with white spots on the undersides. As they feed, leafhoppers excrete sticky honeydew on the leaves below. Fruit may be spotted with drops of excrement and honeydew, which can be washed off. Many species spread viruses and other disease-causing organisms. For people, medically they are harmless, but adult leafhoppers are capable of biting, temporarily producing pain.


insecticidal soap is a good treatment
....Plant Guardian Insecticidal Soap

Controls adelgids, aphids, earwigs, grasshoppers, lace bugs, mealybugs, mites, plant bugs, leafhoppers, psyllids, sawfly larvae, scale insects, tent caterpillars, thrips, whiteflies, woolly aphids and other listed pests.

that should cover it

[Mojo Moyogi]

these are leaf hopper nymphs
also called plant hoppers


Both adults and nymphs feed by puncturing the undersides of leaves and stems and sucking out plant juices, leaving a mottled appearance. Their saliva is toxic causing some plants to react with severe leaf distortions, including warty, crinkled leaves, rolled edges, or stunted growth. Plants may have tipburn (also called "hopper burn" on potatoes) and yellowed, curled leaves with white spots on the undersides. As they feed, leafhoppers excrete sticky honeydew on the leaves below. Fruit may be spotted with drops of excrement and honeydew, which can be washed off. Many species spread viruses and other disease-causing organisms. For people, medically they are harmless, but adult leafhoppers are capable of biting, temporarily producing pain.


insecticidal soap is a good treatment
....Plant Guardian Insecticidal Soap

Controls adelgids, aphids, earwigs, grasshoppers, lace bugs, mealybugs, mites, plant bugs, leafhoppers, psyllids, sawfly larvae, scale insects, tent caterpillars, thrips, whiteflies, woolly aphids and other listed pests.

that should cover it

That's interesting gollum,
Did some searching and found an old post by Scott Martin here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10169&hilit=Maple+fungus of particular interest is the first image in the thread, before the fungus discussion took over and then Googled for images of "Leafhopper Damage Maples". Could leafhoppers be responsible for the supposed "Trident Maple Fungus" of a while back? If they are, then they are very easily dealt with.

Cheers,
Mojo

[Boics]

G'day guys.

Mojo - Very easy to deal with? How?

My population of leafhoppers, thrips or whiteflys vary in abundance!
I'm still not 100% sure what they actually are just yet!

Seems to be very weather related as to how many there are..
The one and only spray that I have does reduce the impact on individual tree's but certainly not for good..

Now the post you linked Mojo does interest me in more ways than the good info (between arguments) that I gleaned.
I too have a few maples (Trident and Japanese) that are suffering similar symptoms to that discussed in this thread (leaf curl etc).

Interestingly the maple issues are not replicated on the Zelkova, English Elms, Cotoneaster and other tree's that are being affected by these aforementioned bugs!
Are the two linked or separate issues?

I'll take a couple of pics tonight when I get home to show..

Cheers,

[Boics]

Pics as promised.

These seem to be the tree's they favour the most..
Although they do both sit and hang around all of them from time to time.

Very interested to hear additional thoughts on this.

[gollum]

Mojo,...
I'm not sure about the relationship to fungus
I would guess it would not be related but I haven't looked far enough into it
so its only a guess

years ago i lost all my maples (3 or 4 small ones) to fungus and then decided it would be a good idea to buy anti-fungus treatment

To Biocs... the pic you originally posted is definatly leaf hoppers
(try google images)

as i said in my first post,

severe leaf distortions, including..... crinkled leaves, rolled edges, or stunted growth. Plants may have tipburn (also called "hopper burn" on potatoes) and yellowed, curled leaves with white spots on the underside.

the most common result I see on some of my plants is like in your last post ...pics 1,3,4


trouble is there are so many different bugs that can cause damage,
so finding a good remedy is best done with trail and error
stick to the directions and don't give up

I had a lot of trouble last year with fungus gnats
there is a post in the pest sect talking about it
we had too much rain which caused plagues of them

maybe thats also what is occuring at your local area

if you can't stop it straight away try those plastic domes from bunnings
or the umbrella style food savers to keep flys out of food etc

hope this helps
J

[gollum]

forgot to mention
I use pest oil and sucess naturalyte and thats pretty much it

pyrethrum is good too and I think I tried neem a few years ago aswell and it works

[Mojo Moyogi]

Boics, you can also use Beat a Bug Chilli, Garlic and Pyrethrum spray, available from Bunnings, weekly as directed.

Gollum, the point I was trying to make about the so called "Fungus in Trident Maples" issue is that I was never convinced that it was a fungal problem in the first place. It could have easily been an insect problem such as Leafhoppers, or a combination of many things that were incorrectly treated.

Cheers,
Mojo

[Guy]

as i said I use pyrethrum(mainly for a quick kill on caterpillars) or neem depending on the weather---but I don't just spray the plants -after individual plant spray I do a general area spray as well--- with neem it doesnt kill the good bugs(ladybirds,bees spiders etc) but you have to spray a few times over several weeks to break the sucking and chewing bug life cycle

[Boics]

Thanks Mojo and Guy.

I will arm myself with some additional resources to kill off these pesky little critters for good!

Gollum.

A very well done and finally now I'm convinced that the bugs in question are indeed Leafhoppers.
It would seem as if we could go one further and potentially call them Potato Leafhoppers? http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef115.asp
To be honest I've never been totally convinced about the original identification so this is a critical step.
It's hard to take appropriate measures for the wrong insects!

I've put a net over a couple of my tree's to reduce the damage and once again will make a few additional purchases.

I'll get back with results in a few weeks time.

Cheers all!

[Boics]

OK so I got hold of some Confidor...

Which certainly seems to assist in keeping the numbers down.

I've also finally tracked down some "beat a bug" chilli stuff.

I'm not so sure the latter is helping so much but the numbers have certainly reduced...

Having said this though I can't be so sure that Leafhopper numbers full stop have reduced somewhat...
I don't notice them in plague proportions like I used too....

Can others confirm numbers of these vermin have indeed reduced with no intermediary action?

[Dario]

Yeah numbers are currently way down for me. They nearly totally went away for a couple of weeks. last week they came back a little bit but it is minimal compared to when they were at their strongest.
This may be due to the time of year in relation to their life cycle and perhaps they start breeding earlier in the season?
I also used confidor and on mojos advice tried the beat a bug spray too.
I haven't sprayed for a month, so the fact that they eased off could be due to spraying, although spraying didn't seem to have a huge impact when they were at the strongest earlier in the growing season?...but I can't be sure that the spraying did not work either?
I am not worried about them at this stage even though there seem to still be a few around.
Cheers, Dario.

[Boics]

Thanks for the reply Dario.
They inflicted horrific injury to my contoneasters, maples and elms.
They not only mark, stain and burn but in some cases deform leaves as well...

Hope you fared better than I.
Also pray that next year is a better year!

I think it's very much weather dependent though.
From what I read they typically last only a few life cycles.
This year I reckon they lasted more cycles than normal!