We have a tree we planted about 2 years ago. During certain periods of the year, its leaves start to look burnt at the edges. I always thought it would be because of amount of rainfall or sunshine, until we started to remove the burnt, very damaged leaves and I happened to look at the underside of the leaves, and found a bunch of incredibly alien looking insects I had never seen before. It was here that, I believe I am correct, and hope...that I realized they are the reason the leaves start to die. I still do not know what they are, but there were just toooo many of them underneath the leaves it looked bit a gross, especially I noticed, the leaves that displayed the most damage. It may not look like much in the green photo, but there were dozens of them. The tree is Tacoma Stans. I did not find pests for it on the internet...so far For now, all I can think of to help the plant, is to dislodge them with water at a high pressure and see if they come back too quickly. I dont know if they have wings, I could not see any flying. It also looks as if they had a needle or something on their face. I took some not too great photos. Thanks!
That's bad luck - Tecoma stans are supposed to be generally trouble free. Do you think it could be a moth? I did find one page on tecoma leaf tier moth (Antigastra catalaunalis) in Arizona. What is Damaging my Tecoma Plants? • Titan Tree Care (titantreeaz.com) The first suggestion there is to do nothing except clean up trim off the dead bits and consider it natural pruning.
Check out the Treehopper family. Possibly Campylenchia species. It's hard to see detail in the 2 photos but it's a possibility.
