Maple leaf tree leaves11/14/2023 ![]() ![]() Cars and sidewalks below may also be shiny or sticky. It sticks to the leaves below scales and twigs and branches. This sticky fecal material is a byproduct of their diet, which consists of sugary material from the host plant. Larson, UK).plug their mouthparts in to feed.Ĭottony maple leaf scale is a soft scale, which means they can make copious amounts of honeydew during their life. Each egg has the potential to hatch into a crawler that may become a scale feeding on the plant. There they will stay and feed until winter and the next spring when they move towards the leaves to begin the cycle anew.įigure 2: In this closeup, an ovisac has been dissected to show some of the many small eggs hidden inside. The resulting crawlers, the early nymphal stage that is mobile, will migrate to the veins of leaves andīy the end of summer and start of fall, the scales will migrate to their overwintering spots on twigs. Inside of each ovisac can be thousands of eggs, which hatch before the end of June. In late May and early June, their desiccated dead bodies are attached to a long trailing cotton “ovisac,” which is a white, messy bag that contains their eggs. Females will move from their overwintering sites on maple twigs to the leaves where they will begin laying eggs and eventually die. Males are winged in order to fly and mate with females. In the spring, males and females will mature into their adult forms. This scale species produces one generation per year. After this visible stage, they can be difficult to detect and may induce some damage before caught. While the cotton stage is the most noticeable stage, it is actually the calm before the storm as this is when the insects are in the egg stage. Entomologists tend to be on-the-nose when naming things, so unsurprisingly this scale insect specializes in feeding on leaves and, at one point in its life, the female has a cotton ball like appearance. Red and silver maples can be host to an interesting looking scale insect, the cottony maple leaf scale. ![]()
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