Scale is often misdiagnosed by new plant parents– the tiny, armored bumps adhered to your plants stems, branches, or leaves may appear to be mechanical damage– but upon further inspection, you’ll be able to identify if the cause of your plants’ malaise is scale and treat it accordingly.
Scale varies in color, size, and appearance but one tell-tale sign of scale is the presence of a sticky residue– scale secretes a honeydew substance. Their sinister sugars can even encourage fungus growth on your plant (to make matters worse.) Black fungus growth or sooty mold is another indicator that your plant may be dealing with scale.
There are two main classifications of scale: soft scale and hard scale. They often appear in clusters and the most common type of scale on houseplants is brown soft scale or Coccus hesperidum for any entomology heads out there. This type of scale is waxy, oval, and is often brown, black, or beige in color. There are thousands of different types of scale, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on brown soft scale.
In order to effectively treat scale, it’s helpful to understand their life cycle. Female scale can produce hundreds of eggs under protective covers that will either look like waxy, oval coatings or white cottony clusters (similar in appearance to mealy bugs– which are in the scale family.) Once those eggs hatch, the insects are mobile only for a short time until they latch on to your poor plant, begin to feed, and develop waxy shells of their own– at this point in their life cycle, they are often referred to as crawlers.
