Thrips
Slender, fast-moving insects that rasp the leaf surface, leaving silvery scarring and black specks.
🔍 How to spot it
Thrips are tiny, thin and pale yellow to dark brown, and dart or wriggle away when disturbed. The clearest signs are silvery or bronze streaks on leaves, tiny black dots of excrement, and distorted, stippled new growth. Tapping a leaf over white paper reveals the moving slivers.
💥 The damage it does
They scrape open leaf cells and drink the contents, scarring foliage with silver patches and dark flecks and deforming new leaves and buds. Like aphids, some thrips carry plant viruses, so a bad infestation is worth taking seriously.
🧴 How to treat it
Isolate the plant and remove the worst-affected leaves. Blue sticky traps catch the adults, and repeated sprays of insecticidal soap or neem oil, every five to seven days, break the life cycle, which includes a soil-dwelling stage. Persistence matters - thrips are among the more stubborn pests.
🛡️ How to prevent it
Quarantine new arrivals and inspect for silvery scarring, since thrips often hitch in on a fresh plant. Keep plants healthy and unstressed, and act at the first sign rather than waiting.
🌿 Plants that get thrips
Attacks a wide range of houseplants and flowering garden plants. These 14 profiled plants name them in their own troubleshooting notes:
Houseplants 10
Struggling to save a plant? The plant rescue guides walk through recovery step by step, and the problem solver works backwards from a symptom. This is general growing advice, not a diagnosis for a specific plant.