It's been quiet for awhile, just odd winter weather and fire and ash and hot hot heat andsuddenly we see a beautiful insect we haven't seen in a while. Jarrell Larmon is a PCA who was nosing around in a Satsuma orchard and he turned up a Barnacle Scale, the likes we havent seen in about 4 years. Pretty little thing. Last time it came under pretty good biological control in no time.
This is the image from USDA
Jane Delahoyde,
a PCA here in Ventura, recently found an unusual scale in lemon here. It is barnacle scale with a typically long Latin name - Ceroplastes cirripediformis. It is unlikely to be any worse than other scales, but it's something to keep our eyes on. This is one of the soft scales, often called wax scales because of the wax they produce. It turns out that this has been described as being in Southern California for years, but some years they are just more present. For more on "Wax" scales see the University of Florida site:
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/orn/scales/florida_wax_scale.htm
or our UC IPM website
http://ucipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7408.html
And this is the scale that Jane found.
