A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 unidentified houseplant pest

I have searched the web for this little bugger, but so far haven't come up with anything. I brought home a Ming Aralia a while back, and much to my dismay, noticed about 30 slow moving creatures living on the plant. There bodies are round, off-white and shiny, probably 2 centimeters in diameter, with teeny tiny legs. Naturally, I nuked them with Safer, and haven't seen them on the Aralia since.
Lo and behold, I went out to pick some rosemary last night, and I saw the same exact bug on the plant, except for these are brown colored.
I could start a pest museum with all my infestations. Any ideas?

Amy, my only suggestion would be to give the little buggers directions to Cindy's Slug Bar! (Sorry, Cindy, that just had to come out! )

i'm moving you to plant pests...

I could be wrong but it sounds like Termite larva.Termites will move into your Garden mulch if theres a lot of wood in it.thats just my guess.a photo would help.
here is a site that might help you.
http://www.pestdepot.net/pest_id.htm

your friend in gardening.mike57

hey mike,
thanks for the link, but i didn't find a match(as far as i can tell)
i just found some dead ones, but they don't show up when i take a pic. i looked at them through the microscope, and now i think it might be a perfectly round cocoon? i dunno, they are so small, like a pin head, it's hard to tell. i just thought it was weird that i had white ones inside, and brown ones outside.

Remember that movie? Aliens.

oh noooo! but cocoon was a happy movie, right? RIGHT? darn, those things are everywhere. well, if i don't show up here in the next few days, you'll know why...

Okay, time for someone to go back to school, or at least actually THINK before posting. I made a major goof on my original post. The pests are 1 millimeter, not 1-2 centimeters, and thank goodness for that, as if I found a bug that was 2 centimeters on my plant, I would have run screaming for the hills!

Amy, what about maggots? :p

No way, uh huh, no how. I don't do maggots. If I so much have even thought that it could have been remotely possible that perhaps they were maggots, the whole plant would be bye-bye.
But thanks for trying!!!

Two words...
(I am an)Imbecile & (duh, it's) Aphids.

LOL!!! I was going to ask if they were aphids... but I though, "Nah, Amy knows what aphids look like."

NO! Not funny, not funny at all! Okay, well, it's kinda funny. I'm such a dork; I have only seen black aphids before. Although, I'm stoked you thought that I knew, that means I'm faking it pretty well!

OK... what's particularly funny to me is that I've only seen green aphids but I knew they were other colors... and since you'd seen two colors, that was my first thought. But like I said, I figured you HAVE to have seen one at some point... OK. Maybe it wasn't THAT funny. Maybe I'm just losing my mind.... :rolleyes:

well sorry i didn't see this post sooner. On Ming the 2 main pests are aphids and mealybugs. Aphids usually attack the new growth. I also just had an outbreak of aphids on one of my rosemary varieties. I am testing a new product for house plants from Pharm Solutions on it. So far so good. I am also testing it on soft scale... we will see how it goes!

Good luck and keep on top of the aphids... or they will come back

It sounds like you may have pear slugs, which take on a different color depending on what they happen to be eating at the time. Not all that common as a indoor pest, but also not unheard of either.

Here is a link:

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/INSECT/05560.html