Lantana Lace Bugs

Lantana lace bugs' gauzy wings shroud their 1/8-inch, brown-and-white bodies. Adult lace bugs target Texas sage in spring, gluing their eggs on the backs of new leaves. The brown nymphs mature in about one month, with the final generation of adults remaining overwintering in bark crevices. If your Texas sage has stippled, faded leaves freckled with dark, shiny specks, suspect lace bugs.

Sweetpotato Whiteflies

Tiny flies swarming from your Texas sage when you shake its branches are sweetpotato whiteflies. More than 30 of these pale yellow, white-winged pests fit on the back of a 1-inch leaf, consuming sap and laying eggs. Adults and nymphs feed simultaneously, causing spotted, yellow shedding foliage and loss of vigor.

Hemispherical Scales

Detecting hemispherical scales on Texas sage is difficult, because the immobile adults’ dome-shaped, shiny-brown protective covering camouflages them as natural leaf or twig growths. Scale nymphs hatch beneath these domes and seldom travel more than a few inches. Scale damage surfaces as yellow, misshapen and undersized foliage.

Honeydew, Ants and Sooty Mold

Having lace bugs blemish your Texas sage's foliage with dark excrement is unpleasant enough, but whiteflies and scale cause an even bigger mess with honeydew. This gooey, clear waste attracts airborne sooty mold spores that germinate into layers of sooty black mold, covering the leaves and branches without penetrating them. Heavy sooty mold may prevent sun from reaching the leaves and interfere with photosynthesis. Ants also feed on honeydew, often killing whitefly or scale predators or moving adult scales to new plants to protect and increase their supply.

Cultural Control

Managing early infestations of all three bugs may take no more than removing and disposing of the affected foliage or branches. Your plant also looks much better without its waste-speckled or mold-blackened leaves. Alternative whitefly treatments include dislodging the adults with a blast of water or vacuuming them with a hand vacuum for disposal after freezing the dust cup in a sealed container overnight. Scraping the plants with a soft toothbrush or scouring pad works well on small scale populations.

Chemical Control

Insecticidal soap spray suffocates any scales, whiteflies or lace bugs it reaches. Spray your plants with a ready-to-use product applied according to the label's specifications, or make your own solution with 5 tablespoons of liquid dish or hand soap in 1 gallon of water. Saturate well-watered plants when the temperature is below 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The soap won't leave residue toxic to ladybugs, lacewings, wasps or the bugs' other natural predators. Continue spraying up to twice weekly until larvae stop hatching. Once the bugs and honeydew are gone, ants abandon the plants and the sooty mold eventually starves.