4

I have a Magnolia champaca plant, also known as 'Son champa' in India.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia_champaca

Recently a few of its leaves contained some very tiny (about 0.5-1 mm in diameter approximately) purple colored jelly kind of stuff.

It very closely resembled a turtle's hump. The slightly bigger ones had some very light purple and yellow colored uniform patterns with an even purple background. The smaller ones however were uniformly purple colored.

I am not sure if they were eggs or pests, they were leaving behind a dry dark brown bubble (holes in some cases) in the leaves they were hosted on.

I plucked off the affected leaves.

Does anybody have any idea what that was and how I can protect my plant?

Pictures:

Bugs have resurfaced

After @Bamboo's answer I looked up for details about the Mangolia Scales and found the exact picture of bug + impact, adding it below, also found this site very useful - http://nassau.ifas.ufl.edu/horticulture/gardentalk/disease.html

enter image description here

VividD
  • 5,870
  • 3
  • 27
  • 74
mbaxi
  • 337
  • 1
  • 7

1 Answers1

3

Check the woody parts of the plant and underside of the leaves. It would have been useful to know what part of the world you're in, but I'm suspecting Magnolia Scale, which does look different depending which stage of growth the scales are in. Usually, you'll find brown to purplish scales with white cottony stuff exuding around them under the leaves and possibly on the woody parts, often clustered together, but again, that varies on the time of year. In a heavy infestation during late spring and summer, you'd expect sooty mould to develop too. More info in the links below

http://idl.entomology.cornell.edu/files/2013/11/Magnolia-Scale-1191hjl.pdf

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef431.asp

Bamboo
  • 135,647
  • 3
  • 80
  • 169