Me neither, but nevertheless, I noticed some white flecks on this trident early in the spring. They didn’t come off easily, and weren’t moving either, so I just kind of ignored them.
3/20/19, easy to see in a night shot with flash:
Then on April 14, I noticed some white spots on the undersides of a few leaves. Get ready…nasty. Scale:
So the infested leaves were removed, and the trunk got a good scrubbing with a stiff wash of Malathion to kill the remaining eggs or whatever they were.
The next day:
And still a few scale bugs to remove:
And on the road to recovery just a few days later:
And after weeks, not a bug to be found, and it’s growing again, and ready for a haircut.
I have been studying bonsai since 1994, in an ever-increasing obsessive fashion. In our last 5 years prior to moving from Iowa to Alabama pursuing a career in the foodservice industry, my bonsai collection was limited to a few varieties that could survive brutal winters outside, or winters under dim light in the dank basement of our humble duplex...my wife puts up with a lot. Including the trailer hitch I put on our brown 1983 Chrysler New Yorker to pull a U-Haul full of trees to Nashville for a 3-month stop along the career path that led us to Alabama. 12 years later, we no longer have the New Yorker; and not a single one of those trees remain on my bench, having given the last holdout to a new club member this summer. I prefer collecting native trees and buying the classical species used in Japan, feeding organic, and reading everything I can get my hands on.
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Nebari Bonsai 
Reblogged this on Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog.