Weird growth (?) on finger lime tree

18 days ago by StickyDango to c/gardening

Hi everyone,

I've had this finger lime tree for a number of years now, and I have never noticed this sort of growth (?) or bug (?) or (??) before.

It doesn't look normal for sure. Tried to scratch it off with a branch, but it wouldn't come off. I'm sure if I scraped it, it would.

I'm leaning towards scraping it off. Is this an indication of worse things to come? I've no idea what this is.

I live in Melbourne, Australia.

Thank you! 😫

Edit: To clarify, it is the red thing with the white dots around it.

rajarizer 14 points 18 days ago

Scale insect! https://environmentalfactor.com/pages/scale

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StickyDango 3 points 18 days ago

Oh, yuck! I've had scale on plants before, but I've not seen one that looks like this. I'll be removing this in the next 5 minutes. Thank you!

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Mouselemming 7 points 18 days ago

I'm no expert but it looks like some kind of scale insect. There's a huge variety, and some do like citrus, so maybe search by images. I'm Team Scrape.

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StickyDango 2 points 18 days ago

Oh, I am definitely scraping it off and inspecting the rest of the tree more closely. I'm used to seeing the brown scale, not ones like this before. I also removed two very big caterpillars this morning boldly continuing to eat once I set my eyes on them.

Thank you!

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Mouselemming 4 points 18 days ago

Check on the caterpillars before you kill more, just in case they're some kind of great native butterfly 🦋 if so you can maybe relocate them instead. I get some fat green guys on my non-native gold medallion tree that become pretty yellow native butterflies, and the tree recovers.

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StickyDango 1 point 18 days ago

Ah, this is true. I didn't think about this. 😔 This poor tree has been through the ringer. When I lived at a higher elevation, it nearly died in its first year because of how cold it got. It recovered really well, and now survives all weather. I guess being my first native tree, I go in to protective mode because so many bugs seem to like to eat it, too!

I did see my first honey bee today visiting the flowers, and it had some decent-sized pants. My usual panic (might be allergic) was replaced with "Ah.. Hello, bee <3"

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Mouselemming 2 points 18 days ago

I'm glad it's doing well! I've had good luck taking the whole leaf from one overrun tree to another untouched one, so I don't have to squeeze the caterpillar. Maybe there's a non- native citrus tree that could handle a caterpillar or two? You don't have to save them all, Nature wouldn't.

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