We have been getting a bunch of small white cotton-looking things on the top surface of leaves on our Hydrangea plants (it's summer here). They do not move or fly and appear to be dead but they seem to have legs of some kind. It seems the most likely thing they are is aphid casts / skins. My question is - how do they come to be on our plants - are they eggs that have hatched. If so, what do they look like before they hatched i.e. there's nothing obvious on the leaves except the white stuff and it just appeared out of nowhere.
Aphid casts/skins on Hydrangea
- Thread starter Graeme
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Chuck
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Yep, those are aphid casts. And yes they were hatched from eggs but how they got there is anybody's guess, but, they probably were blown in, laid their eggs and started living on your plant. There are many colors of aphids so Google aphid images to know what to look for.
Marck
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Greetings, welcome to the Forums.
Those skins are the cast exoskeletons of some hemimetaboulous insect, either aphids or something similar. Altough aphids mostly give 'live-birth' to asexual clones, many species do overwinter as eggs that hatch in Spring. These could be the exoskeletons of that first Spring generation. They have likely scattered to chosen feeding locations either on the Hydrangea or another plant. You may encounter their clonal descendants later in the season.
Those skins are the cast exoskeletons of some hemimetaboulous insect, either aphids or something similar. Altough aphids mostly give 'live-birth' to asexual clones, many species do overwinter as eggs that hatch in Spring. These could be the exoskeletons of that first Spring generation. They have likely scattered to chosen feeding locations either on the Hydrangea or another plant. You may encounter their clonal descendants later in the season.