What Pest is attacking my Longan Tree?

[JakeFruit]

Finally got my little tree looking healthy, but in the last two months I’ve been noticing very tiny white flecks under the leaves and in the branches. Mostly random individual flecks, but they definitely colonize in patches (like in the pics below). Leaves started turning yellow & dropping. Tried poking/prodding the flecks, nothing is moving (don't think it's a fly), looks like a scale. Really hoping it’s not the dreaded mite…


I drenched it completely with Monterey Horticultural Oil yesterday. It’s a tiny tree, so I’ll brush whatever it is off in a few days (if it’s still there). Just want to have a plan ready for the next time I notice it.

[Timbogrow]

Maybe it's lichen or a fungi since you eliminated the chance of it being a white fly. The lychee here shows some mite damage but the longan have yet to be affected by the erinose mite.

[Galatians522]

Looks like mealy bugs to me. They have never caused a serious problem in my experience. In any case your oil spray should take care of them. Definitely not lychee mite. It causes worty looking leaves with a rusty colored felt on the back. The lychee Erinose mite occationally pops up on longans near lychee, but it never spreads in the longan tree and eventually dies out on its own or moves. I believe that it can't reproduce on longan. There is a longan erinose mite as well if my memory serves me, but it has not been found in Florida.

[JakeFruit]

Thank you both for the feedback and reassurance. I think I might have tracked down what it is, Lychee Leei Scale:


Article from UF/IFAS describing it: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/pestalert/2020/07/10/lychee-tree-scale-pest-found-in-florida/
Unfortunately the article doesn't suggest any treatments, so I'll just treat it like other scales.


I thought longan wasn't effected by the erinose mite, but then I read a bunch of articles that put me in doubt. Seems in Taiwan the erinose mite attacks both trees. It's reassuring to hear there's probably some amount of resistance/avoidance to the pest in longan here. I really wanted a lychee, but I've seen a few trees in the area get hacked back to the trunk because of infestations.

[Galatians522]

I've never seen that pest before. I will have to keep an eye out for it. For what its worth, I have seen lychee with the mite 30' from longan with no issue. We have some longans in our lychee grove and the mite has not been an issue on any of them eventhough we have found the mite in multiple places.

[JakeFruit]

Yeah, I really can't believe I have this new pest, but it's the only pic/description that fits what I'm seeing. The closest lychee to me is probably 200+ yrds away, as the crow flies, and I would guess there's maybe a dozen trees in a mile radius around me (not a popular neighborhood fruit tree compared to mango/avocado). I bought the tree back in the spring from the Manatee Rare Fruit Society sale, maybe it already had it.


I am thinking again about also having a lychee and just trying to keep it small & very manageable.