In message m,
peter123 writes
Hi,

I am having a great deal of difficulty in tracking down a problem with
my Bay Tree.

We originally had two Bay Trees, the first one died last year with this
problem and now it's spread to the other one.

These are the symptoms:

a. Sticky Leaves
b. Leaves go from normal green, to a light green and finally to a dried
up golden brown and fall off.
c. Occassionally the leaves go black at the tips

I have inspected all the leaves and there is no signs of any insects
big or small.

There is also no sign of any "soot".

Please help!
Peter, this sounds very much like scale insect (not sure if that's their
proper name)to me. They are tiny creatures that are hard to spot
because they are flat and look like flaky bits. It happened to my
grapefruit tree a few years ago. Take a magnifying glass to the
undersides of the leaves at the main vein that runs beneath the leaf.
If you see brown flat bits there, you may have scale. I found it almost
impossible to eradicate them, and finally had to dump the tree
altogether, and I'd grown it from seed. It was 10 years old.
--
Chris Boulby National Collection of Diascias
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