Questions with Stanton Gill

Extension specialist in Entomology and IPM, Stanton Gill, will discuss the lifecycle of crape myrtle bark scale and Japanese maple scale, the best control techniques and how to monitor for it at his cultivate session, “Dealing with major armored and soft scales in nurseries and landscapes.”

NM: What can attendees expect to learn at your talk?

SG: I’m going to concentrate on three major scale insects. One of the fastest spreading ones in the South and on the East Coast is the crape myrtle bark scale, Acanthococcus lagerstromiae. It was introduced from China and showed up in Texas around 2008 or 2009. It spread through the South incredibly rapidly. It’s moved up the East Coast, and we’re finding it up in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and southern parts of Pennsylvania, any place that can grow crape myrtles. It is a different family from what most people are used to on scales. Mostly, we see armored scale and soft scale which are Diaspididae and Coccidae. This one is Eriococcidae which is called the felt scale. It’s a little different than others we’ve had. It not only spreads fast, once you get it on the plant and someone sticks it into a nursery or landscape, it spreads off that plant into adjacent plants very easily. It looks like snow on the branches. There’s white wax that they produce, and they’re feeding and tapped into the phloem of that plant. They’re taking up huge amounts of sap, and when they do that, they’re passing it off as honeydew. Then the plant becomes coated with honeydew and coated with sooty mold. This crape myrtle bark scale has become a big problem in the nursery industry, and so far it’s been confined to crape myrtles.

NM: Why should people consider attending?

SG: I’ll also discuss Japanese maple scale. It is a huge deal because it feeds on so many different species of plants, being found on over 300 species of nursery plants, and if it gets into a nursery and someone ignores it, it will spread all over and do a lot of damage. It has two generations per year that are extremely long. Usually scale insects produce crawlers for maybe about two weeks. This insect is more like six to seven weeks on the crawler period, so there’s a longer time for dispersing itself if it gets into a nursery.

Want to go?

Dealing with major armored and soft scales in nurseries and landscapes

Monday, July 17 at 9:30-10:30 a.m. Room A223