2001 Photos of Asian Scale

Photos of Asian Scale

Location: CFPACS

Date Submitted: Winter 2001

This King Sago near Orlando is completely covered with Asian Scale. The leaves are becoming yellow and dried out. The attack is severe and the plant may attempt another flushing of leaves but the scale will quickly damage the new growth before they can develop. Sagos under attack like this do not survive more then 6 months under this type of insect stress.

Here is a badly infected Queen Sago. This queen sago is located in the Northdale area of Tampa. The scale is present throughout the trunk system. The dangerous part about a plant in this stage is that the wind will blow scales off this plant and downwind onto other sago palms. In this neighborhood, every yard has at least one sago palm.

Note above how coated white the leaf petiole is. The little bit green along the petiole to the left side of the photo is due to my attempts to physically remove the scale from the leaves before opting to cut the leaves from the plant. These petioles were hand scraped clean of scale 3 days ago, treated with Malathion and Orthene, what you see above is how quickly the scale came upfrom the soil and recovered the leaf.

The white specs all over the mulch are free crawler scales that fell off the leaves as this small King Sago was stripped of its leaves to aid in control of the scale. The scale appears to fall off easily and seem to be carried in the wind as easily as dust. Spreading by the wind is considered to be the way this scale is spread from plant to plant, neighborhood to neighborhood.. The scale is also all over the fuzzy growth areas in the crown, those were there before the leaf trimming.

A close up of the leaves, perhaps showing a better view of the pin shaped crawlers on the leaves.

A King Sago and only recently infested. If you look carefully at the crown area you can see the scales have recently found their way to this plant and are advancing out of the crown and up the leaves.