sticky plant - Ask Extension
this houseplant is leaving sticky residue all over the floor. It appears to have aphids or scale. I've sprayed water and used neem oil in the past f...
Knowledgebase
sticky plant #925706
Asked March 09, 2026, 3:28 PM EDT
this houseplant is leaving sticky residue all over the floor. It appears to have aphids or scale. I've sprayed water and used neem oil in the past for similar situations and it never seems to work well, and this plant has a ton of leaves and stems so I'm hoping there might be some sort of alternative treatment.
Baltimore City County Maryland
Expert Response
Yes, scale insects are the pest pictured in the photo, and they can be a common indoor plant problem. Scale are difficult to control, as they often require applications of pesticide to eliminate or reduce their numbers. If the palm spends the summer outside, natural predators of scale can help to suppress scale, but indoors, you may need to apply one or more insecticides.
Options are listed on our Scale Insects on Indoor Plants page and include topical horticultural oil sprays, which need to be repeated regularly to catch overlapping generations of scale (only the youngest life stage is the most vulnerable to the suffocating effects of an oil coating), or soil-applied systemic chemicals that the roots need to absorb and transport to the foliage. As scale feed on the sap, they ingest the systemic chemical and are killed. Since it takes time for the chemical to move into the foliage and be ingested by the scale, this is a longer-term control option, but it still may need repeating a couple of times to kill enough of the scale. Dead scale do not always fall off of the plant right away, so it may be hard to tell a treatment is working at first. If you use horticultural oil, it may be worth treating just a couple leaf "fronds" first and waiting a few days before treating the whole plant to make sure it's not too sensitive to the spray. (If it is too sensitive, leaf damage that looks burned or bleached can appear, and another treatment option will need to be used.)
Make sure any pesticide you decide to try is labeled for indoors use; few are. If spraying with horticultural oil, a thorough coating is necessary to catch as many scale as possible since they are fond of wedging themselves in tight spaces and crevices on the leaves and stems, like areas of pleated/folded leaf tissue and where leaves join the stem.
Scale insects can more easily overwhelm stressed plants, and palms can struggle indoors due to the low humidity and limited light. While rinsing the leaves off in a shower (or outside with a hose if the weather is mild) is useful to help remove dust and a small number of pests on the leaves, it unfortunately won't remove enough scale to serve as a treatment option by itself.
Miri
Options are listed on our Scale Insects on Indoor Plants page and include topical horticultural oil sprays, which need to be repeated regularly to catch overlapping generations of scale (only the youngest life stage is the most vulnerable to the suffocating effects of an oil coating), or soil-applied systemic chemicals that the roots need to absorb and transport to the foliage. As scale feed on the sap, they ingest the systemic chemical and are killed. Since it takes time for the chemical to move into the foliage and be ingested by the scale, this is a longer-term control option, but it still may need repeating a couple of times to kill enough of the scale. Dead scale do not always fall off of the plant right away, so it may be hard to tell a treatment is working at first. If you use horticultural oil, it may be worth treating just a couple leaf "fronds" first and waiting a few days before treating the whole plant to make sure it's not too sensitive to the spray. (If it is too sensitive, leaf damage that looks burned or bleached can appear, and another treatment option will need to be used.)
Make sure any pesticide you decide to try is labeled for indoors use; few are. If spraying with horticultural oil, a thorough coating is necessary to catch as many scale as possible since they are fond of wedging themselves in tight spaces and crevices on the leaves and stems, like areas of pleated/folded leaf tissue and where leaves join the stem.
Scale insects can more easily overwhelm stressed plants, and palms can struggle indoors due to the low humidity and limited light. While rinsing the leaves off in a shower (or outside with a hose if the weather is mild) is useful to help remove dust and a small number of pests on the leaves, it unfortunately won't remove enough scale to serve as a treatment option by itself.
Miri
