Powdery white stuff on a friend’s old Arkansas Black apple tree but not on her other apple trees. Some kind of scale? Hit with horticultural oil? Thanks for ideas.
Update: looks like photos on internet of wooly aphid. How harmful is it?
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It usually doesn’t spread very far. My standard treatment is just rub it all off real good with gloves.
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Wooly aphids. I had them two years in a row in Golden Russet on B9. Fuji on G41 5 ft away has never gotten them. Don’t know if they like B9 or Golden Russet.
The first year I rubbed them off, bare hand because I was so PO’d. I thought I got them all but they came back in the fall of that year.
The second year they showed up again on the same tree. I rubbed them off and at the end of that season, I sprayed the tree with oil. I sprayed oil again at the beginning of the following season,
So far, I have not seen them.
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Yes, woolly aphids.
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They’ve never been a problem when they’ve appeared on my trees, but if they feed on the roots, the literature suggests they can be a huge problem. Not sure why none of the trees I manage have suffered from this as far as I know, because they are very common above the ground. They love my metal squirrel baffles and probably figure they are homes I install for them.
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