Bugs!
 

One of my potted indoor basjoo's hasn't been growing for 3-4 months now. Has 3 good looking pups though. It had about an inch or so of mostly dead on the top so I decided to cut it down / cut off, The inside seams to be all rotted / mushy. While poking around / taking out some mussy bits with tweezers I found some weird bugs.

Ive read about spider mites and these are definitely not them. There very small, About the size of a grain of rice or smaller. There kinda white greenish and some I saw had some brown.

Anyone have any idea what these might be? Should I just cut it down till there's no more rotten? I think its only rotted 1/3 or so the way though the middle.

Re: Bugs!
 

Yeah, you have to cut it down untill there is no more rot. I have no idea
what creatures those bugs are:confused:


Ron

Re: Bugs!
 

Do you have any pics ? I thought your description sounded like aphids untill I realized that you found them inside the plant .Now I'm curious .

Re: Bugs!
 

It might be mealybugs white sometimes a off tan color ,,,pics would tell the story!-Jason.

Re: Bugs!
 

Well I already cut it down a lot and threw away the cuttings. I should have tried to get a picture first.

So far they don't look like anything suggested. They didn't have any kind of visible legs or head. Kinda like a worm, But white and super small. They where really hard to spot.

Re: Bugs!
 

search images of borer larvae and see if that looks like the culprit . Larvae of many insects will infest damaged plants as well . So it (your plants demise) could be a result of something else and the bugs are taking advantage of your misfortune .

Re: Bugs!
 

Anything I'm seeing on "borer larvae" doesnt quite look like these.

I can't seam to find anything like them searching.

Re: Bugs!
 

After further investigation it looks like it has rotted all the way down into the corm. I cut it down even further (about 1") and can see black down in the corm which Ive read means its rotting and to try and get all of the black out. Is this the proper thing to do?

Re: Bugs!
 

thats what bigdog (Frank) has told other poeple on here to do

Dan

Re: Bugs!
 

That might be where I read it then.

I went ahead and just cut it down to dirt level and found a couple more of the things. The batteries died in the camera after just two pictures and the one attached was the best one.

It was a cut from about 2" up or so and as you can see its got some dead in the middle.

For a bit of a size reference if you notice the white thing in the lower right of the picture that's a single dog fur / hair that somehow made its way there. Or the cut bit was probably about 1" in diameter.

I also went ahead and took and exacto knife and kinda cut away / scraped out the rest of the mushy bits from the corm then rinsed it out. I mainly did this to try and remove any of these little guys that where still in it. I don't really care at this point if the mother some how comes back or not as there are some pups that I could probably cut off now and they would be fine as well as just to know these little guys are gone.

Re: Bugs!
 

That looks like a fruit fly larva or pupa . If this is the case they would have entered the plant after the damage and may have actually served to exacerbated the problem .

Re: Bugs!
 

No idea what the bugs are but i would just chop back the stem to solid material. Assuming all the bugs have gone with the bad stuff you cut off it should recover.

Re: Bugs!
 

Thats what I did. :)

Re: Bugs!
 

Sounds like fungus gnat larvae. They like to eat rotten banana corms. It probably had some other problem first that caused it to rot and they moved in to eat it up.
I'd take those pups you talked about off of that corm, take that corm and see if it's salvageable at all, cut off all the bad stuff and see if anything is left that looks like it'd grow. Let it dry out a few days, then dip it in a pesticide solution or at least a neem oil solution. Let it dry again and then replant it in fresh soil and in a different pot. That empty pot with the fungus gnats, either disinfect it thoroughly in physan 20, or a 1:10 bleach solution for 10 minutes or toss it out.
And those pups, check them for signs of the gnat larvae and also treat them with the neem oil or pesticide. That will give you the best luck, I'd think.