A photo might help people answer that. In the meantime, recall that panicky growers can kill a plant just as easily as pests and disease.

Your plants, like mine, have an infestation of Tecoma Leaf Tier. “Tier” is pronounced like tire. The worms tie the leaves up in curls. They also skeletonize the leaves, and they end up looking like clear tissue paper. The black dots are their poop. From what I’ve found, it it’s a relatively new insect. Also, from what I’ve found, they can be controlled with an organic spray called BT. BT stands for Bacillus thurengiens, but don’t trust my spelling of the full name. BT is a soil microbe that affects the intestines of worms and caterpillars. They aren’t killed on contact. They die when they eat it, so you don’t have to spray every single insect. Other insects and critters, like bees, pets and people, aren’t affected because they don’t have the intestines of a worm. For more info, Google ”Tecoma Leaf Tier.”

NinaJC (original poster) here again. Well, of my three Bernhardt roots planted last October, only two sprouted small leaves and then promptly died. I bought two Karl Rosenfelds already 18" tall and with very nice looing buds on them at our ocal garden center sale yesterday, and couldnt wait to plant them instead. When I began to dig a hole, I found the original Bernhardt roots and they were black, crumbly, and had little white bugs on them. Now, I am terrified to put my new peonies in the same place in the flower bed for fear that these bugs will infest the new ones. What do you all think? Are well established plants not as susceptible to these types of pests? Can I put Safer's insecticidal soap in the holes, would that hurt the roots of the new peonies when I plant them? I am so frustrated! But, I did get a full refund from the catalogue which financed on of the new Rosenfelds. Help!

Hi Peg, I received your email regarding this GW post. Sorry to her your plumeria is having some trouble! In terms of details on what I did, I took regular household H2O2 purchased at walgreens and poured it over the affected areas of the plant stalk. I let it sit for a minute or two and then took a green scrub pad from the kitchen (those thin green scotch pads) and scrubbed the affected area. I had to scrub reasonably hard, but you do have to be careful to avoid tearing the skin of the plumeria stalk (this probably depends to some extent on how old your plant is and how weathered)... Some of the spots came off right away... others were more stubborn. For those I used a 2nd round (and 3rd for a few spots) of peroxide and focused on those areas. Before putting the plant back I tried the stalk with a towl to make sure I removed any extra moisture and then put it by the window. Whole process took 15-20 minutes at most. Not at expert on plumeria fungus so this may not have been the absolute perfect approach, but does seem to have worked. It has been 2 full months and I have not seen any re-growth of the fungus (or whatever it was). My plant is still dormant but I see no signs that it is having any adverse affects as a result of the above treatment. Looks happy and healthy to me :) Good luck and hope this information helps! Let me know how it turns out for you! Rebecca