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Hibiscus as a source of allergies?
Hibiscus out here in the sunny West are common landscape
plants...the red ones are usually less winter hardy than the other colors
for some odd reason.... I’ve seen this many a time too. In San
Luis Obispo where I live, and especially in Los Angeles and San Diego,
they are preyed on by the silverleaf whitefly (Bemisia argentifolii);
almost every single hibiscus in some areas.... and it is triggering
some bad allergy problems too. This whitefly has also invaded large
parts of Florida. Because so many whiteflies get on the hibiscus plant,
millions of them, they secrete loads of "honeydew" (a sticky
excretory waste that is mostly plant sugars) and then sooty mold grows
all over this. The end result is a sick shrub that is daily producing
an incredible amount of mold spores and insect dander, both of which
are highly allergenic. (As the whiteflies die or simply undergo metamorphosis,
lots of insect dander is produced.)
By the way, hibiscus (sometimes with the same whitefly problems) are
often used as houseplants, and an infested plant like this inside your
house is a surefire way to get sick.
I usually advise people to hose down their buggy landscape hibiscus
hard, very hard, to knock off as many of the pests as possible, and
then to prune the entire plants back hard, to about two feet or less
in height. Words of warning though for those with allergies, wear a
facemask when you hose down one of these! Insect dander and mold spores
will be thick in the air as you do this.
They should then start spraying what's left of the shrub with fungicide
and insecticide. This species of whitefly has developed considerable
resistance to most chemical insecticides. Instead, use a soap, vegetable
oil and water spray with several tablespoons of baking soda added per
gallon for a safe insecticide/fungicide. (For each gallon of spray use
up to 5 tablespoonfuls of dish soap and 3 spoonfuls of any kind of vegetable
oil.) If this doesn't do the trick after repeated sprayings (and often
it doesn't) then the advice from here is to shovel prune the offending
hibiscus.
A friend of mine, a nice guy but not a very good gardener, asked me
recently what I meant by shovel pruning roses. We were in my back yard,
working in a bed of roses. I picked out a rose bush that had always
been quick to get rust and mildew and slow to flower, put the shovel
to it, dug it up and tossed it in the trash can. "That," I
told him, "is what the rosarians call shovel pruning."
"Oh," he said, and seemed impressed, "now I get it."