White egg-like stuff on top of my citrus leaves

15 years ago

Hello,

Does anyone know what a circle-like form of tiny white eggs on *top* of my orange tree leaves could be?

What I know for sure it is not is: swallowtail eggs which look brownish and they are on the bottom of leaves) & whitefly eggs, which look a bit more elongated than what I keep seeing on my citrus and are laid also on the bottom of leaves. These odd formations are always on the top of the leaves...weird, cannot find it anywhere on my bug books or on-line...

If anybody know your help to identify these buggers is much appreciated!

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Comments (10)

jean001
15 years ago
can you post an image? It would help us help you.
thegardeningfool
Original Author
15 years ago
Oh man! I am so sorry for the delayed response I have never posted anything and thought that an email would be sent to me whenever someone followed up (I thought I clicked that option!)...anyway, I have tried to take pics of it but the egg-like thingies are so darn small that it only shows like a uniform white thing on them...I also looked it up on line and no pics or descriptions like mine anywhere...I will try to photograph it again today and see if I can come up with something somehow decent.

Thanks for trying to help me jean001, I truly appreciate it.
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Jean, yes they are raised. I also haven't seen it change/spread significantly since noticing it the first day. It doesn't seem to effect the plants in question and I have put them back with the others now. Byron, if it was mildew it should wipe off to some point shouldn't it? I am thinking my conditions aren't to good for mold or mildew but I don't know. temps from 70-85 F humidity from 40-55% usually 45% Shelby Guy, I have had mites before. I am familiar with those lil buggers and am very diligent in looking for them. My light which is 1000w HPS is farther (~3ft) than I want (prefer -2ft) it from the plants. I am pretty familiar with my lights also so I can assure you my lights do nothing negative to my plants. Paul, I looked at your link. From what I read it probalby isnt that, but I would have liked if they had included a pic. Thanks for the input everyone. I think it is under control now. They will all get to go out and play in 2 more weeks. Michael
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thegardeningfool
Original Author
15 years ago
Jean001...took pic but could not figure out how to post a pic here so I just posted it in my blog...aaaaaaaah...now it won't let me post a follow up unless I change the subject line! I hope you can find this thread...or else you'll think that I was ignoring you :(

If it is not too much to ask, would you mind going there to check it? It is the first entry you will find.

My blog is GardeningFool.blogspot.com

Here is a link that might be useful: gardeningfool
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
Do these little things look like the image in the attached link?

Here is a link that might be useful: Take a look!
thegardeningfool
Original Author
15 years ago
Hi rhizo, thanks for looking it up...I searched the same site top to bottom and could not find a description that looks like those eggs nor a picture that shows the same.

These eggs are like perfect tiny smooth white balls...all arranged together like in the picture in my blog...they are never scatered around the leaf.

So weird, I have been gardening for a while now and have never seen something like that.

I'll keep looking...if I find out before someone gets the answer here I'll be sure to post the answer.

Thanks again!
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
They didn't look spherical in the picture (to my eyes). There are many insects that lay eggs such as that, including various stinkbugs. If you look up some images of stinkbugs, you'll see examples that fit your description quite well.

Maybe you can take a picture that doesn't look quite so much like fern scale, lol! Which are found on many host plants, by the way, including citrus. ;-)
thegardeningfool
Original Author
15 years ago
Funny, believe me, if I could I would take only photos with no bad stuff eggs at all! Only butterfly or other beneficial insects eggs!

Mea culpa :-) I thought they were spherical...but when I zoomed in my photo I realized that they look exactly like the ones in the photo of the fern scale.

Thanks so much for the time you spent helping me out with this!
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
You're very welcome, gardenfool. Just to clarify things a bit....the white stuff that you can easily see is not eggs, but the actual scale insect. A male fern scale, to be exact. I looked again at your image and I don't 'think' I see any of the brown females, but chances are pretty good that there might be some hanging around.

The eggs, if there are any, are under the protective 'shell' of the female insect, safely out of sight.

Be sure to wipe off the insects and you might want to consider an application of horticultural oil.
hines_chip
8 years ago

Sounds like this - does it look the same? I don't know what it is either
hines_chip
8 years ago
Rhizo - is the pic of scale you provided a link to pretty magnified? I thought mine looked like round white eggs, but when I zoomed in as far as I could it looked more elongated with pointy ends like your photo shows. But it's hard to tell the size of the ones in the link

White egg-like stuff on top of my citrus leaves

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jean001

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White egg-like stuff on top of my citrus leaves

Comments (10)

jean001

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