I recently bought a desert rose (no knowledge of plant beforehand) and it's doing well, but it has brownish yellow scales on its leaves. It takes a bit of scrape to remove a scale 'cause it's dry on the surface but underneath, it's squishy with a yellowish goo. I haven't seen any insects/pests on it and there's no sign of inhabitation whatsoever, so I'm stumped. After I clean the plant, the spots come back a week later. Should I be concerned?
Is it possible to get a good close-up photo? Other than scale insects, themselves, which are known to inhabit "Desert Roses", I am not clear on what you are describing. Caudex1, any ideas? Mark
Sounds like scale to me. 2 way to deal with them, manually remove them all, repot into fresh and new container after all insects are gone or systemic insecticide. These are tough little boogers, the ones you see are the easy one. It's the microscopic size that gets over looked. You call also use rubbing alcohol at the base of the leaf where they like to hide. Move plant to an area that has good air circulation. I prefer the manual method, you may have to do it a couple times to eradicate them completely.
Well, I figured it would be a manual labour solution...took 5 hours (!) to get them all off checking every nook & cranny of each leaf topside & under. So...can't provide a photo because there gone now (I hope) besides my poor plant doesn't look to photogenic right now. But, in addition to the yellowy brown goo inside the "scale", the disgusting things had a centre spot on the undersides, kinda like a sucker attachment to the leaf...ugh! BTW, any specific insecticide you'd recommend? Thanks again for the help!
I'm not a insecticide user so not sure what the latest thing is. I have a friend who owns a nursery and he uses Marathon.
