A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Cacti and Succulents Indoors Pest Identification

Hi all,

I recently bought a 30+ year old jade plant from a person's house contents sale. The woman said she's often sprayed it for pests over the years.

I do not have ANY previous experience with pests, as I'm fairly new to indoor plants. All i know is from looking at pictures online and doing a bit of reading.

1st:
When examining the leaves, there seem to be a lot of leftover carcasses (they seem dead or non-alive enough) on MANY of the leaves... mostly undersides, but on top as well. They're medium brown mounds, edges flush with the surface of the leaf.

2nd:
I'm getting a very fine cottony layer of white on some of the leaves, near the stem... but i don't see any big mealy bugs crawling around. Where this white cottony layer occurs, the leaf area starts darkening to a grey/purple.

3rd:
Among some of the trunks of my jade plant, and stretching across some nearby branches, are fine webs. If i look VERY closely, i can see tiny white critters nesting in these webs. Are they healthy NORMAL spiders... or evil spider mites, I'm wondering?

I'm attaching pictures that illustrate the 3 items above. Please chime in with your observations and suggestions.

Thank you!

Welcome, Wes.
I think the white powdery stuff is powdery mildew. I would remove each infected leaf as soon as it shows up. And make sure the plant is in a light and airy situation.
I do not know enough about insects to tell you what you may have. Whether they are regular spiders or evil ones they will still travel from place to place carrying that possible mildew to new surfaces.
I recommend an insecticidal soap. Go easy on the mixture. Jades have a waxy coating that help protect them and some soaps can break that down and cause more damage than good. I would use about have recommended strength and maybe more often than it says.
When the insects are taken care of then you can concentrate on the powdery mildew. For that you spray with club soda or a baking soda/water mix. It does work although it takes time.

Well... I started removing a whole bunch of the leaves that had the white fuzzy stuff, and inspecting them under the light. Didn't seen anything scurrying around on any of them. But i did pick up a leaf from the base of the pot that had fallen earlier... and there were a few TEENY TINY itsy bitsy light brown bugs racing around on it. Hm... adding that to my list of worries now. :(

definitely have mildew/fungus situation(s) going on. the webs are probably regular spider webs...spider mites usually stay at the top of plant branches (they like the tender new growth) and their webs are more like single strands that drape over/back & forth rather than circular webs like spiders make.

removing affected leaves will help the mildew/fungus issues.

so will allowing the soil to completely dry out. jades are succulents and don't need a lot of watering to begin with and during winter time need even less...giving a bit of water once every 6 weeks is all that's needed until spring when it comes out of the dormant stage - then water every 2-3 weeks.

i wouldn't repot it right now - do that in the spring.

as for treating with something - i'd go with something that is anti-fungal. spider mites aren't visible to the eye, so, whatever you saw (the brown things) might be something that isn't harmful...can you get a pic possibly? or just a better description? size, how many legs, how fast they were, etc.

it's a really gorgeous plant - hopefully, whatever is wrong has been caught quickly enough and there won't be too much damage.