TL;DR: I’m a relatively new houseplant owner and just spent several hours with rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs de-scaling my relatively large umbrella plant (schefflera). Has anyone else dealt with scale before and successfully gotten rid of it? I’d love to hear your stories!

I’m relatively new to houseplants - before recently, the best I’ve done was a lucky bamboo in college… that I killed because I didn’t water it enough. Two winter holidays ago, my partner got me a ZZ plant and a snake plant, both of which I’ve so far successfully kept alive (though the snake plant has some issues for another post).

Since then I’ve been gifted several other plants - a large umbrella plant last fall, and this May a peace lily, spider plant, and aloe. I hadn’t ever really looked at my schefflera very closely other than to admire the new leaves it rapidly sprouts, but several weeks ago I thought it would be a good idea to let the plants get more sun on our apartment balcony… the schefflera was clearly wilty and unhappy after several hours so I brought it back inside, along with the peace lily. I noticed some sticky stuff on the leaves, but didn’t really pay it much mind. Fast-forward to last Friday when I’m watering them and notice the backs of some of the schefflera’s newer leaves are looking blackened. I looked closer, and noticed what looked really tiny white wriggly things on some of the leaves.

That freaked me out so I ran out and got some 3-in-1 insect spray from Home Depot and applied it liberally to the plant after sunset. I’m not a fan of chemicals but I was really concerned and just wanted to murder whatever I saw immediately. I’d noticed a couple scab-y like things on the peace lily (that I wiped off, and which should have clued me in to what this was…), so I sprayed it too.

I checked in tonight and realized - holy shit those scab-like things are ALLL over my umbrella plant?!! Several google searches later I learn it’s brown soft scale, immediately grab some rubbing alcohol + cotton swabs, and go over every single leaf wiping off those buggers. Some were so small, though, that I’m definitely worried I didn’t get them all. I also have no idea how long the umbrella plant has been infested… my first thought is that the scale came in on the new plants I got in May, but I don’t know if it could have reproduced to the extent I saw on the umbrella plant in 7 weeks? The bottom leaves of the plant fell off every so often since I’ve had it and now I wonder if it was due to this…

I’m feeling terribly guilty, but glad I did catch the infestation eventually, and I think as long as I keep an eye on it for the next couple of weeks and possibly spray it some more, it’ll be okay 🤞