I got this plant more or less a month ago and found out it had this spotted points under and on top of the leaves, so the first thing I did after a couple of days was repot it and cut off all the damaged leaves. Then a couple weeks later I find them again. I look online and I’m pretty sure it’s a fungal issue so I bought a fungicide but I don’t have it yet. In the meantime I’m giving it a lot of airflow by keeping it near my open balcony door. What do you think? I also noticed that on the stems there are black dots, do you think it’s the fungus or else?
by Live_Expert8077
3 Comments
I think you may have thrips
Thrips love new plant tissue. What you might be seeing on the leaves is frass, aka thrip 💩. They lay eggs in the plant tissue and the larvae is very small and like to hide in crevices in your plant. Wash your plant down well, with dawn dish soap and water. Also, you can treat with chemicals or naturally with beneficials. Lastly, quarantine this plant and check any others next to this one, thrips can fly but, not that well. Always such a bummer to deal with pests.
is there any shiny film near the black dots?
do you see any pests?
look for thin fast movers hiding in creases of leaves. if it is thrips. The solution is nematodes [non chemical] that kill thrips, and manually cleaning leaves. Thrips can do some damage but are not so destructive that they kill plants, and they{thrips}are manageable, but you need to positively ID a pest before you treat it, to prevent further stress or damage to plants from chemical pesticides.
Also, try to never spray leaves of begonias, if they get sprayed do so in low light with high airflow and do what you can to keep droplets from staying on leaves..