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How to identify it
- The adult female is broadly oval and convex, about 2 to 2.5 mm across, with a yellow, light brown or orange-brown body hidden under abundant fluffy, snow-white wax. Females swollen with eggs become plump and circular, and their skin hardens and turns dark brown.[2][1]
- In spring the settled first-generation scales coat the new shoot above the overwintered mother, giving the shoot a woolly look. In summer the second-generation males settle at the base of the previous year's needles and secrete copious wool, so a heavily infested tree looks flocked; the most noticeable sign is these masses of white wax at the base of needles and on shoots.[1][3]
- Crawlers are tiny, elongate oval and yellow to red, with six legs. First-generation adult males are wingless and brown, smaller than the females and often found trapped in the females' wool; second-generation males are winged.[1][2]
- The wax is woolly rather than powdery. Among North American soft scales, only a magnolia scale, some populations of a scale that does not feed on pines, and the pine tortoise scale carry heavy white wax, and in all three it is powdery.[2]
Look-alikes
| Look-alike | How to tell them apart |
|---|---|
| Pine tortoise scale | A soft scale that often shares the same pine shoots and can carry white wax, but its wax is powdery, not woolly.[1][2] |
| Striped pine scale | Another soft scale that cohabits pine shoots with the woolly pine scale; it lacks the woolly pine scale's fluffy white covering.[1] |
| Pine bark adelgid | White cottony material on white pine bark and twigs comes from adelgids, not from a soft scale; the woolly pine scale is recorded from hard pines such as loblolly, slash, shortleaf, longleaf and pitch pine.[1] |
Where it lives
Infestations have been found only in the eastern United States, from New York south to Florida and west to Louisiana; none have been reported from Texas although host pines grow there. ScaleNet lists records from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and New York.[1][2]
Biology and life cycle
Recorded hosts are loblolly, slash, shortleaf, longleaf, pitch, sand, mugo, table mountain and Caribbean pine. The scale often shares shoots with the striped pine scale, the pine tortoise scale and a mealybug.[1]
There are two generations a year throughout the range. Overwintered females at the shoot tips start laying eggs as the first flush of shoot growth begins; the eggs hatch almost at once and the crawlers settle on the new growth and begin secreting wax. Egg laying runs from mid-May through June in south Georgia and several weeks later farther north.[1][2]
In loblolly pine seed orchards on the Georgia coastal plain, crawler activity peaked in late March to early April and again from late May to mid-June, and females averaged about 500 offspring each. Survival was higher in the upper crown and varied by tree clone.[4]
Females pass through four instars and stop moving once settled, since their legs shrink after the crawler stage. Males have five instars, including a prepupa and pupa inside an elongate waxy case. Most first-generation scales are female; the second generation produces many males, whose adults emerge about early July in south Georgia and three to three and a half weeks later farther north, fly to the females and mate with several each.[1][2]
Dispersal happens in the second generation, when the crowded shoots leave no room: female crawlers are blown by wind or walk to uninfested new shoots, and may be carried by other animals. Second-generation females then sit dormant until spring. Their wool often wears away over fall and winter, survivors are hard to spot, and up to 85 percent of them die.[1]
Its natural enemies are shared with other southern pine soft scales: green lacewings, a wax-eating pyralid moth larva, and the parasitic wasps Coccophagus lycimnia and a Metaphycus species.[1]
Damage and signs
- Damage is mostly cosmetic. Heavy populations may stunt shoot growth, and the sap removed from shoots and needles may weaken or stress the tree. Death is rare unless other stresses are present, though a severe attack can cause branch dieback.[1][3]
- The scales excrete sticky honeydew, which feeds sooty mold fungi. Blackened needles and shoots, together with the wax, can cut photosynthesis and slow growth, and the honeydew draws bees, ants and wasps that annoy orchard workers and homeowners.[1][3]
- Outbreaks are usually a side effect of spraying. Insecticides, pyrethroids in particular, kill the mobile parasites and predators while the sedentary, wax-covered adults survive, and aerial applications are more likely to fuel infestations than ground applications. A review of soft scale management likewise says heavy use of broad-spectrum pyrethroids, carbamates and organophosphates can lead to scale outbreaks. Because the scale has only two generations a year, the outbreak typically shows up one or two years after the treatments begin. Parasitism during outbreaks has been under 5 percent, and a Georgia infestation of loblolly pine followed five pyrethroid applications.[1][2][5]
Health risk
The scale does not harm people; the honeydew it leaves attracts bees, wasps and ants, which can be a nuisance around infested trees.[1]
Control
Prevention
No control is generally recommended. Left unsprayed, outbreaks are substantially reduced by natural enemies, and perhaps by weather, within one to two years. In plantations the Alabama Forestry Commission likewise advises against treatment and expects predators to bring the population back down.[1][3]
If other pests on the same pines must be sprayed, choose products with little residual activity and the least toxicity to natural enemies, prefer ground over aerial application, and time treatments to crawler activity where possible.[1]
Pesticides
Older nymphs and adults are covered by wax that water-based sprays cannot penetrate, so any treatment works best on crawlers and newly settled young scales. Oil and insect growth regulators are easier on natural enemies than broad-spectrum sprays.[5][1]
Where an infestation is severe, time any application to crawler emergence, about four days to a week after the first hatch, and target the first generation, whose crawlers emerge together just after the spring shoot flush; one treatment then usually suffices, while the drawn-out second generation would need several. Use a product registered for scale insects in that setting. Any pesticide must hit the crawler stage, which runs from May to July.[1][3]
Horticultural oil can suppress adult scales with fewer effects on other organisms, and a systemic insecticide applied as a soil drench around the base may be an option for infested ornamental pines; ask local extension which to use and when. Heavy drenching sprays may kill adults but are not advised because control is incomplete and they invite future pest problems.[1][3]
Where sources disagree
Hosts: the USDA Forest Service and ScaleNet record it from hard pines such as loblolly, slash, shortleaf and longleaf pine, while the Alabama Forestry Commission's field guide says it mainly attacks eastern white pine and Scotch pine and can also attack the southern pines.[1][2][3]
Crawler timing: the Alabama Forestry Commission says the crawler stage runs from May to July, while a Georgia coastal plain study found first-generation crawlers peaking in late March to early April.[3][4]
Size and color: ScaleNet gives the adult female as 2 to 2.5 mm across with a yellow to orange-brown body, while the Alabama guide describes it as about 1/16 inch long and greenish brown under its wax.[2][3]
Common questions
- My loblolly pines look like they were flocked for Christmas. What is it?
- Masses of snow-white, fluffy wax on new shoots in spring and along older needles in summer point to woolly pine scale, a soft scale of southern pines. The wax is woolly rather than powdery, which separates it from the pine tortoise scale that often lives on the same shoots.[1][2]
- Should I spray it?
- Usually not. The Forest Service recommends no control in most cases; natural enemies knock outbreaks down within a year or two unless insecticides keep killing them. If you must treat a high-value ornamental, horticultural oil or a soil-applied systemic timed to the crawler stage is the suggested route.[1][3]
- Why did the scale show up after we sprayed for other pests?
- Pyrethroid and other broad-spectrum sprays kill the wasps, lacewings and other predators that keep the scale rare, while the wax-covered adults survive. With only two generations a year, the scale takes a year or two to build up, so the outbreak looks delayed.[1]
Sources
- USDA Forest Service, “Woolly Pine Scale, Forest Insect and Disease Leaflet 178 (S.R. Clarke, December 2010).” www.fs.usda.gov/foresthealth/docs/fidls/FIDL-178-WoollyPineScale.pdf (accessed 2026-11-11)
- ScaleNet (scale insect database begun at the USDA ARS Systematic Entomology Laboratory), “ScaleNet catalogue: Pseudophilippia quaintancii Cockerell.” scalenet.info/catalogue/Pseudophilippia%20quaintancii/ (accessed 2026-11-11)
- Alabama Forestry Commission, “A Field Guide to Identifying the Most Common Forest Pests of Pine Plantations (woolly pine scale entry).” forestry.alabama.gov/Pages/Informational/Images/Pine_Pest_Field_Guide.pdf (accessed 2026-11-11)
- Journal of Entomological Science (Georgia Entomological Society), via Crossref, “Life history of the woolly pine scale Pseudophilippia quaintancii Cockerell (Homoptera: Coccidae) in loblolly pine seed orchards (Clarke, DeBarr and Berisford 1989).” doi.org/10.18474/0749-8004-24.3.365 (accessed 2026-11-11)
- Journal of Integrated Pest Management (Entomological Society of America), via PubMed Central, “General biology and current management approaches of soft scale pests (Hemiptera: Coccidae) (Camacho and Chong 2015).” pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4725186/ (accessed 2026-11-11)
- iNaturalist, “Pseudophilippia quaintancii taxon page (order and family).” www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1024165 (accessed 2026-11-11)