Insect and Spider Identification: CLOSED: what's this?, 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
They look like scale insect eggs to me, I get them underneath Camellia leaves and they are a permanent problem. The scale itself usually lives near the midvein of the leaf, also on the top, and at different stages can be found camouflaged at a joint between the leaf and stem, or on the stem. They live in soil and from what I have read the older scales help carry young ones up the plant. One of the sexes can fly, but I have no idea what the actual scale adult which flies looks like as I ahve only ever seen them as a scale, and that scale turns completely into a length of eggs, gradually reducing itself as it 'lays' them.

If you rub them off they feel a little gritty at the eggs stage, tiny brownish eggs covered in white fluff. The usually look like a square ended streak of fluff.

Once you have them they are very difficult to get rid of, I have to check all year round, including winter, the young ones are very difficult to see unless you get used to recognising them as they are small, greenish, and very flat. They exude a sticky substance as they feed on the plant saps, which drops to leaves below and black sooty mould grows on it.

This is a pic of one which has completely turned into eggs alongside one which is just starting.