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Weird growth (?) on finger lime tree (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/gardening@lemmy.world
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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.

Green branch of a blooming finger lime tree with a small growth on it. Red circle with a white dot in the centre, and around the edges.
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[โ€“] 6 points 1 month ago (5 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.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 2 points 1 month ago (4 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!

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 1 month ago (3 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.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (2 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"

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 2 points 1 month 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˜‚

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