What are these on my Acer?

stroud glos, United Kingdom

In my 1st question on cuckoo spit and froghoppers people kindly explained that the spit was a white froth. I truely am not being funny as none of you know what I know ( if you know what I mean. That's in a song isn't it ? ). My point was that ( my error for not stating ) is it the time for breeding for the bug and this is what they do with the froth used to serve some purpose other than over feeding ? I do hope the picture will help. I'm sure it's not serious but am very curious. Cheers.

3 Jun, 2009

Featured on:
acer trees

Answers

Rydeboyz

They're scale insects.

Have a look at:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profiles0801/scale.asp

3 Jun, 2009

Adrian

Cheers.

3 Jun, 2009

Bamboo

Recent advice from doctorbob on this site was to use a cotton bud dipped in methylated spirits to get rid of them, something I haven't tried and didn't know about. Scale doesn't usually kill the host plant though, and there's no treatment otherwise.

3 Jun, 2009