What's Eating Your Japanese Honeysuckle?

Two patterns on honeysuckle. The honeysuckle witches'-broom aphid is a tiny pale gray-green insect that lives on the soft tip growth and triggers a tight cluster of stunted leaves. Regular aphid colonies are 1 to 3 mm pear-shaped insects in green, yellow, or black, packed along bud stalks and the underside of paired oval leaves.

The witches'-broom aphid produces the iconic distorted terminal growth. New shoots fold into a tight rosette of stunted leaves that never opens normally and ruins the flowering display at the vine tips. Regular aphids leave curled new growth, sticky shiny film on lower leaves, and reduced fragrant bloom.

Hard or soft brown bumps stuck to the woody twining stems and along the underside of paired oval leaves, 1 to 4 mm wide. Look like tiny barnacles. Don't move because they're glued in place. Often hide in the cracks of older bark and at the leaf-stem joint where leaves attach to the vine.

A sticky shiny film on leaves below the cluster, often with black sooty mold over weeks. Yellowed leaves around each cluster and slow stem dieback on the older woody parts. Heavy infestations weaken the vine and reduce the fragrant bloom display, but honeysuckle's vigorous regrowth helps it tolerate a season of pressure.

Almost invisible without a hand lens. Yellow-green to red specks running along the underside of the paired oval leaves. Show up in drought stress when the vine is planted in dry soil or against a hot wall. Late summer is peak mite season on stressed honeysuckle.

Tiny pale dots speckle the upper leaf surface, then bronze patches spread across whole leaves. Fine webbing strung between leaf undersides and along the leaf-stem joint in heavy infestations. Affected leaves drop early, and the vine looks dusty and tired through the late-summer bloom window.

The larva of a tiny fly or moth, 2 to 4 mm long. The adults are rarely seen. Damage comes from the larva tunneling between the upper and lower surfaces of the paired oval leaves. A documented honeysuckle pest, especially in mid to late summer on shaded interior growth.

Distinctive squiggly white or silvery trails on the paired oval leaves. The trails widen as the larva grows and may end in a small blistered patch where pupation happened. Damage stays cosmetic. Honeysuckle's vigorous regrowth replaces affected leaves through the season and the vine shrugs off the loss.