Pest identification and treatment help, please!

[John]

I will attach some photographs of an insect pest which is attacking my Hibiscus syriacus, the Rose-of-Sharon.

I would appreciate help identifying this pest, as well as ideas for how best to treat against it.

Thank you!

John

[Chris_W]

Hi John,

They look like some type of scale insect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_insect though I've never seen this exact one.

They can be treated with a light oil spray, or if it is really bad use a systemic insecticide. If not many I tend to just wipe off the adults (like these) and then treat with a general insecticide to kill any of the tiny babies that might be crawling around.

[John]

Thanks, Chris. I checked the link, and see there are 8 or 9,000 species, so making an i.d. is hard. I note that these things are causing distorted growth on the ends of the shoots.

[Chris_W]

Zooming in on your picture reveals some of the babies on the leaf tips, so yes, they are feeding and causing distorted growth, much like aphids can do. They shouldn't be too hard to get rid of

[Buckeye]

Compare it to cottony maple scale, or maybe cottony cushion scale. Either way, the hardest part about control is getting an insecticide through the cottony mass to the insect's body. They are probably still young enough to make it happen with many off the shelf insecticides. If not you may have to use something with a systemic such as imidacloprid.

[John]

Thanks, Chris and Buckeye.