pepibom I believe those ARE scale. Mealy bugs are fuzzy and white even cottony if you will. I battle these constantly and unfortunately they are very difficult to get rid of.....completely any way. They also LOVE the flat leaves of a bird of paradise plant. I recently received three orange BOP and am hoping to keep these away. I have lost many white BOP to these stupid things. I believe they make honeydew which is a sticky substance and that can eventually cause more problems like fungus or disease. You mentioned it's not looking the best. If the plant is stressed out it is a calling card for pests. This also will make it more difficult to rid the pests. The location it's in sounds right to me for these plants. They like sun. I would definitely keep wiping the plant down with a solution of rubbing alcohol water and some mild dish detergent. Use a cloth and wipe the leaves on top and under, stems and all. I'm hopin someone else will chime in here because like I said I have these pests myself. I just wiped down a couple of cast iron plants myself-- talk about time consuming. If it's bad or becoming a bother you might consider finding a new plant- although two years is a long time to have a plant. These plants however I find are rather easily attainable. They are a lovely plant to add to a collection and really add a tropical feel. Good luck on the battle!!! Kyle

Toni, yes rural Midlands area of UK, right out in the 'sticks' as we say here. Think it was in an 8inch pot, now in 10inch but also deeper and with a 'belly', not straight sided, didn't want to overpot to much. The 2 tall yellow plants grow wild around here, Verbascum Bombyciferum/Aaron's Rod, self seed all over garden, they're biennials. Palm to left of bird is seed grown Canary Island date, Phoenix Canariensis, seed picked/sown in Nov 2004 from Lanzarote. Spikey plant behind bird is also from seed I found, Dracaena Draco/Dragon Tree, same date and origin as above, have 3 of these. To right is store bought Chamaerops Humilis/Dwarf Fan Palm, I'm into palms also! White/purple flower, properly known as Pelargonium here, (often called Geranium but they are separate related genus), don't know cultivar, have several from cuttings off my mum's origainal, they're actually perennials although parks depts often grow these and geraniums as annual bedding plants. There's one of my seedling Plumerias at the front, Callistemon Citrinus/Oz Bottlebrush at the back, some Hoya Carnosa/Krimson Queen vines hanging over the pelagonium and a 'peep' of a Passiflora Caerula/passion flower on extreme left! As you can see I have it real bad as that's only part of the g/h! I will try anything, the more unusual the better but we have to lag/heat the g/h to frost free during winter. Will post some pics once the BoP blooms and a few more pics for you in a separate post in a min. Gill.

Don't be mistaken! I'm no authority on bop... But they are close relative of banana, canna, and ginger... I have 2 bop, one white tree bop and a dwarf...neither have been affected, nor the bananas either, but my cannas are eat up with rust! It starts as a few specks of orange...it looks dusty but if you rub it it you feel bumps on the leaves, within a week the lower leaves are fully inundated with it, they brown and wither away after another month or so...the new leaves are fine... I'm not sure exactly what it is! But it's a fungal infection! Spray only helps to hold it back, it's in the environment... I notice your in z6 like me, so it seems to me there's a pretty good chance that we are under attack from the same thing... Can you get a pic? It would be helpful...

I don’t use much fertilizer so I can exclude chemical burn. Did you know your plants can suffer from fertilizer burn, the malady, even if you have never fertilized? Solutions with a low concentration of dissolved solids/salts move to an area with a higher concentration of dissolved solids until isotonicity (balance) is reached. You might remember the process of osmosis from biology. Water in the soil solution normally moves into cells through the semi-permeable cell membrane until the level of solutes in bound water (water inside of the cells) is the same as the level of solutes in the soil solution. The technical name for fertilizer burn is plasmolysis, and it occurs when the level of dissolved solids in the soil solution rises to a point higher than the level of solutes in bound water (water inside of cell walls). Under this condition, water no longer moves freely into plants through the root cell membrane; rather, it moves out of cells into the soil solution in the same way that curing salt pulls moisture from ham or bacon. As cells shrink due to dehydration, plasmalemma is torn from cell walls, destroying cells. If you're not flushing the soil with regularity, dissolved solids from tapwater accumulate in the soil until osmosis is severely impaired, at which time the plant starts to exhibit symptoms of drought stress, even if the soil is awash with a sea of plenty. My guess is, you're over-watering. Over-watering = a reduction in the oxygen required for roots to function normally = impaired root function = the plant's inability to move water efficiently = drought stress and accompanying symptoms, which include spoiled foliage as seen in the images you provided. Heat stress might also be in play, as the potential for heat stress increases as respiration decreases. I would A) start using a "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water (see below), B) flush the soil thoroughly the next time you're sure the plant needs water (see below), and start the plant on a more appropriate fertilizer, like Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 and see how it goes. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Flushing Soils When you water, you should be able to flush planting's soil to eliminate the potentiality of salts from fertilizers and tapwater accumulating in the soil, thereby limiting the plant's ability to take up water and the nutrients dissolved in the water. If you think you shouldn't flush the soil during your regular water applications for fear the soil will remain saturated for a lengthy period, limiting root function or worse, you should consider a different soil or take steps to reduce the amount of excess water your soil can hold. By whatever means necessary, getting to the point you can water correctly is going to make a very big difference in the opportunity to realize as much of it's genetic potential as possible. Once you can water correctly, you no longer have to do battle with a water-retentive medium over control of your plant's vitality. There are several methods of limiting how much water your planting can hold, all but 1 or 2 are completely passive, requiring no effort on your part other than set-up, which is monkey easy. I can help if you have interest in that, I'm continually improving my proficiency at monkey easy tasks. To flush the soil of a planting: Water with room temperature water until the soil is completely saturated. Allow the planting to rest for 15 minutes to an hour to allow as much of the salt accumulation as possible to go into solution, then pour a volume of room temp water equal to at least 10X the volume of the pot the plant is in slowly through the soil. This will remove most of any accumulation of offending salts and resolve any skewing of nutrient ratios. It's a good idea, no matter what time of year, to fertilize most plants immediately after flushing the soil. Try to be sure you're using a fertilizer that has a ratio as close as possible to the ratio at which the plant uses nutrients. The NPK % listed on fertilizer packaging is not its ratio. 7-7-7 and 14-14-14 are 1:1:1 ratios. 9-3-6, 12-4-8, and 24-8-16, are all 3:1:3 ratios. Container growers should try very hard to avoid use of fertilizers advertised as 'bloom-boosters', or any number with a middle number (Phosphorous) higher than either the first or third numbers (Nitrogen or Potassium). These fertilizers can badly skew nutrient ratios with even the first application). On average, plants use about 6x as much N as P, so there is NO potential for a positive outcome when supplying many times as much P as the plant requires. I, and a large number of other members, use Dyna-Gro's Foliage Pro 9-3-6. It's designed to closely mimic the uptake ratio of the average plant, and has many other attributes not commonly found in other fertilizers. It also has ALL of the nutrients essential to normal growth. Summarized, it makes fertilizing as easy as it can be, and from 1 container. BTW - when you water, are you allowing the plant to sit in the effluent that would normally exit the pot if it had a drain hole? and, Does your home have an ionic exchange water softener (the kind you have to regularly recharge with salt? Al