this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2026
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46
Weird growth (?) on finger lime tree (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by StickyDango@lemmy.world to c/gardening@lemmy.world
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi everyone,

I've had this finger lime tree for a number of years now, and I have never noticed this sort of growth (?) or bug (?) or (??) before.

It doesn't look normal for sure. Tried to scratch it off with a branch, but it wouldn't come off. I'm sure if I scraped it, it would.

I'm leaning towards scraping it off. Is this an indication of worse things to come? I've no idea what this is.

I live in Melbourne, Australia.

Thank you! ๐Ÿ˜ซ

Edit: To clarify, it is the red thing with the white dots around it.

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[โ€“] rajarizer@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Scale insect! https://environmentalfactor.com/pages/scale

[โ€“] StickyDango@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Oh, yuck! I've had scale on plants before, but I've not seen one that looks like this. I'll be removing this in the next 5 minutes. Thank you!

[โ€“] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm no expert but it looks like some kind of scale insect. There's a huge variety, and some do like citrus, so maybe search by images. I'm Team Scrape.

[โ€“] StickyDango@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh, I am definitely scraping it off and inspecting the rest of the tree more closely. I'm used to seeing the brown scale, not ones like this before. I also removed two very big caterpillars this morning boldly continuing to eat once I set my eyes on them.

Thank you!

[โ€“] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Check on the caterpillars before you kill more, just in case they're some kind of great native butterfly ๐Ÿฆ‹ if so you can maybe relocate them instead. I get some fat green guys on my non-native gold medallion tree that become pretty yellow native butterflies, and the tree recovers.

[โ€“] StickyDango@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ah, this is true. I didn't think about this. ๐Ÿ˜” This poor tree has been through the ringer. When I lived at a higher elevation, it nearly died in its first year because of how cold it got. It recovered really well, and now survives all weather. I guess being my first native tree, I go in to protective mode because so many bugs seem to like to eat it, too!

I did see my first honey bee today visiting the flowers, and it had some decent-sized pants. My usual panic (might be allergic) was replaced with "Ah.. Hello, bee <3"

[โ€“] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm glad it's doing well! I've had good luck taking the whole leaf from one overrun tree to another untouched one, so I don't have to squeeze the caterpillar. Maybe there's a non- native citrus tree that could handle a caterpillar or two? You don't have to save them all, Nature wouldn't.

[โ€“] StickyDango@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

There's no other non native (or native) citrus tree I could give it to. Suppose I could try to entice the magpies to have it, but I don't have any other bushes or trees that produce anything edible, so the caterpillar might not take to them. I'd have to huck it over the fence to the neighbours' tomatoes ๐Ÿ˜‚