Sooty Mold Crepe Myrtle Diseases
Sooty mold looks much like it sounds as if black ashes had been rubbed over part of a plant.
Sooty mold crepe myrtle diseases. Instead it grows on sticky honeydew secreted by sucking insects like aphids scales and white flies that do feed on the leaves. Sooty mold is a fungus that covers the leaves and looks like you just sprayed your crepe myrtle with asphalt. A light coating of sooty mold often disappears by itself during dry weather or you can wash the black residue from the trees. With crape myrtle sooty mold does appear on leaves but it can eventually cover the the trunk.
The black you are seeing on the crepe myrtle is a mold that grows on a sugary substance that aphids in this case excrete. Bark feeding bugs crepe myrtle bark scale insects make their home on the plant s exfoliating white bark where they conceal themselves beneath protective wax. Aphids scales mealybugs and whiteflies most commonly cause this. Sooty mold doesn t directly harm crape myrtle trees but it can.
On crepe myrtles and most other plants the culprit here is either sap sucking aphids or bark sucking scale. These common molds are caused by fungi that grow on the sugary substance called honeydew produced by various insects that suck sap from the plant. Sucking insects such as aphids and scales are attracted to crape myrtles and will suck the leaves for plant juices. More information on successfully growing crape myrtles is available in hgic 1008 crape myrtle and hgic 1009 crape myrtle pruning.
Sooty mold is really an insect problem and if you control the insects you will not have sooty mold. Sooty mold indicates that there is an insect problem on the plant. Scale white flies lace bugs mealy bugs and other insects excrete this. Black sooty mold is actually an airborne fungi spore that latches on to the sweet sticky honeydew secreted by leaf and bark feeding insects.
This is seldom a good idea the mold doesn t feed on the foliage. Crape myrtles lagerstroemia indica are essentially trouble free small trees the most common problems include powdery mildew cercospora leaf spot aphids japanese beetles and sooty mold.