Ficus Whitefly is Killing our trees/hedges!!!!!

ALERT- FICUS WHITEFLY INFESTATION

If you have a ficus hedge- you need to be very aware of the possible infestation of whitefly. It is an extremely virulent pest – fast moving- and will defoliate and kill your ficus in no time at all. If you have not noticed any brown or thinning patches on your ficus yet- all you need to do is look around the neighborhood and you will see numerous examples of it. At first, you might not realize you have a problem and may think that with water restrictions, your hedge just isn’t doing well-but within days you will have empty dead patches of ficus.

Even if you have not seen any sign of damage yet, take a look at the underside of a few green leaves. If you see a number of tiny little white spots on the underside of the leaf- you have whitefly and it will progress, without treatment, to the next stage of defoliation.

I am not advocating any particular company or method of treatment – but in searching for information on the pest came across a web site for a pest control company that had a very good article on the whitefly – so am including a link to that site – for the information it provides only- and to some other articles you can check out. See http://www.onetwotree.com/advisories.php?gclid=CJf0nJ-KuJQCFROI1QodixLVTQ

The bottom line- we lost so much foliage after Wilma - it took almost 2 years for my hedge to fill out- I don’t want to have to replant and start over and am hoping that the treatment I have been doing my yard will halt the progression – and that those of you who get this warning will pass it along to your neighbors as I’d hate to see the entire neighborhood with dead hedges. Don’t delay!

Also check out http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/pi/enpp/ento/Singhiella%20simplex.html

And http://blog.ewm.com/2007/12/04/whitefly-attacks-south-florida-ficus/