*SOLVED* Fuzzy White Stuff Destroying my Shrubs? *PICS*

[CritterHill]

Can anyone tell me what this stuff is and how to get rid of it? It was all over my wisteria last year and I ignored it - now the wisteria looks like it is having problems (I had no idea you could actually kill a wisteria vine, I thought they were indestructible)

Now I see it all over my lilac bushes!

If you can't tell from the pics, it is individual white fuzzy lumps, like miniature rice grains stuck to the branches.

Thanks!

 

[S0rcy]

Without seeing it under a microscope or up close to touch it, my first instinct is to say white rust, but I've never seen white rust on wisteria, well .. that's an understatement, I've never seen ANYTHING attack a wisteria.

It definitely looks fungal in nature. White rust uses more than one host to survive and is airborne. As a tentative second I would say powdery mildew, but it's so white and clumped together its a VERY tentative second. The third option would be some type of bacterial infection that could only be diagnosed through an extension service or plant pathologist.

 

[whatnow?]

Can it be removed? Does it leave damage or lesions behind? It reminds me of powdery mildew, but I've never seen it on the woody part of a plant and it's splotchier.

Fungal infections give me the creeps. Do you know the commercial for the toenail anti fungal medicine where the cartoon lifts up the toenail and climbs under it? It's the most disgusting thing on tv... makes me feel faint when I see it...

 

[patandchickens]

From your description of 'individual lumps, like fuzzy rice grains' I'm wondering if it could be mealybugs... although I have to say I have never seen mealybugs out in the open like that on outdoors plants (as opposed to houseplants). Google mealybugs, then take a close look at whatcha got, and see what you think. If it *is* mealybugs, there are ways of killing them (including *persistant repeated thorough* manual removal i.e. squishing).

If it's not mealybugs -- and it would be a new one on me if it were -- it is almost certainly fungal. I almost wonder whether it might be the fruiting bodies of a bracket-fungus type thing (there are some that don't create distinct brackets). If that were the case, on the one hand it probably ain't doing your plants any good but on the other hand you generally only get such things when the tree/shrub is already in significant trouble from some other cause. Wisteria is prone to having the stems rot out; but forsythia... has your forsythia experienced any other stress, like drought, having its roots mangled, etcetera? If it *is* a bracket-fungus type thing I am afraid there is probably not much of anythign you can do about it.

If it is not mealybugs, I would strongly suggest googling around to find out if the PA state extension service, or a college/university, or a master-gardener program, or something like that can help you. Heck, if you can't find any other help, try phoning somewhere like the Morris Arboretum and acting helpless and desperate, and asking if they can tell you who you should talk to

Good luck and let us know what happens,

Pat

 

[Rosalind]

I have a sneaking suspicion, but without more info, hard to tell.

Go out and mush some up with your fingers, and then come back and tell us what it looks like.

I used to get a bug, dunno what kind exactly, on my fruit trees. It would lay its eggs under a coating of white stuff that looked an awful lot like fungus, but was in fact some sort of nasty bug excretion. And if you mashed the fungus-looking-stuff, you could see all the baby bugs and larvae squidging around in it. They ate only new shoots, so were common in spring/summer. Spraying with dormant oil and insecticidal soap helped.

 

[S0rcy]

EXCELLENT suggestion! It should have crossed my mind and didn't!

I have a sneaking suspicion, but without more info, hard to tell.

Go out and mush some up with your fingers, and then come back and tell us what it looks like.

I used to get a bug, dunno what kind exactly, on my fruit trees. It would lay its eggs under a coating of white stuff that looked an awful lot like fungus, but was in fact some sort of nasty bug excretion. And if you mashed the fungus-looking-stuff, you could see all the baby bugs and larvae squidging around in it. They ate only new shoots, so were common in spring/summer. Spraying with dormant oil and insecticidal soap helped.

 

[CritterHill]

Wow, all this help and where was I? Out at the circus all day.

I will go squish some up tomorrow morning and report back once it is light out!

(off to google mealy bugs...)

 

[CritterHill]

This lilac _was_ in trouble last year. It had what in retrospect looks like it may have been powdery mildew last summer (now that I have done GIS for that as well).

The mealy bug pics don't seem to line up with what I am seeing.

I just went out with a flashlight and scraped some off. No obvious damage to the trunk of the bush. Definitely no bugs in the mess. If I use my 10x jewelers loop, it looks like tiny, tiny, tiny flower petals or petal shaped tubes almost...

When I roll it between my fingers, the petal things stay pretty much intact.

 

[S0rcy]

Do you have leaves on any of the affected plants yet? If so, does any leaf have black/brown spots, rings or curled leaves where they shouldn't be?

 

[patandchickens]

This lilac _was_ in trouble last year. It had what in retrospect looks like it may have been powdery mildew last summer (now that I have done GIS for that as well).

Nah, lilacs get powdery mildew really commonly (this was just on the leaves, right, not the branches?) and aside from being ugly it is pretty totally harmless.

Definitely no bugs in the mess. If I use my 10x jewelers loop, it looks like tiny, tiny, tiny flower petals or petal shaped tubes almost...
When I roll it between my fingers, the petal things stay pretty much intact.

That sounds like the non-bracket-forming bracket-type fungus, to me. The fruiting bodies (the 'mushroom' part of the fungus) is composed of a gajillion tiny parallel tubes. I am not saying that's definitely what it is, but it sure is consistant with fungus.

If that IS what it is, the mycelia (the 'root' part of the fungus, as it were) are all throughout the wood of the branch, and the white part is just the 'flower' part as it were, so there is no particularly great point in trying to treat the white part per se. Unfortunatley I do not think there is anything but the axe that can be done for a systemic fungal infection. It generally only happens to shrubs/trees that are hurtin' from some other cause already, tho.

What Rosalind says rings a bell somewhere in the back of my head, too, though. How long has this stuff been there like that on the lilacs? Is it possible that the tubelike things you are seeing are elongated, as-yet-unhatched insect eggs?

If it were me, I would continue to try to pin down a definite identification. If it turns out to be what it sounds like to me, though, you may have to either a) trash the entire plant including digging up the roots, or b) if you wanna gamble, you could cut it back virtually to the ground and see if 'clean' shoots come back.

Good luck,

Pat