You can tell by their “flocculent” covering. I googled it. Sick. Seriously, I had no idea what these disgusting little aphid things were on my nice new aeonium (repotted and rehomed from concord, ca to my apartment in sf). Its leaves were falling off and I suddenly spotted these white fluffy hairballs growing in all the crevices of the plant.
SO disgusting. I think this succulent is too far gone so I’m going to throw it out (and bleach the pot), but I already spotted two on my jade plant nearby! I’m not sure how to kill them yet so I hand-killed the ones I saw, and hope it doesn’t get any worse. They don’t appear very mobile, so I have no idea how they got from one pot to another. Some gardener’s forums online suggested killing them with rubbing alcohol but in a daze of repulsion, I sprayed the whole aeonium with lysol a couple days ago. Not only did kill only some of the woolly buggers, it also probably killed the top part of the aeonium. I wasn’t sure what they were, they could have been some type of plant sucking lice for all I knew!