Chamaedorea microspadix leaf tear

[grinel]

Hello everybody,

I've been lurking here for a while, selfishly consuming the information available, and this will be my first post. Not sure if this is the correct location for this post, I haven't spotted any 'Disease' section..

So basically I've planted a few palms this spring, all of which are doing relatively fine, except for these 2 microspadix, which have their leaves turned to shreads.  They are planted in mostly shade, in partly acidic (ericaceous) soil, as they are located at the border of the fern area of my garden. Maybe this is the cause for the leaf damage and this is a classic symptom of the soil being too acidic?

Other reasons that I thought of might be the slugs, which can be quite numerous here at times, but I was thinking the tears don't quite look like they are caused by pests, as they are not at the edges of the leaves, but rather between veins, in the center. Some leaves are completely anihilated, but the damage seems to start with small yellow spots which extend between leaf veins. 

Does this look familiar to anyone? Thanks in advance

[awkonradi]

Welcome to PalmTalk!  I don't know what ails your Chamaedorea.  I hope you get responses from PalmTalkers wiser than me.  But, I do think it's possible the damage is from invertebrates eating the fronds from the middle.

[grinel]

Hi, thank you, it's nice to post, finally! 😀

I would gladly place invertebrates at the top of my list if the leaves were healthy except for the missing tissue between the veins.To me it looks like the leaves develop yellow patches, then necrosis starts - they turn brown, which leads to the gaps seen in the pictures. But then again, I have very little practical experience with palms, and I don't think I've seen this before, at least not to this extent - the other plants where I've seen invertebrate damage are succulents and on those it looks pretty much like miniature rodent damage. So you may be right... 

[Josh76]

Looks exactly like slug/snail damage. They love C. microspadix unfortunately!

[grinel]

Thanks guys, well, now I know what to look for on other leafy plants. I guess I'll move them to a pot, closer to the house, they are clearly not ready to be released into the wild 😆

Also, I'm now investing in beer traps. Exploit their one weakness, apart from microspadix leaves! They won't know what hit them.

Edited December 23, 2023 by grinel

[happypalms]

Josh has got correct slug damage try crushing egg shells and sprinkling around the bottom of the palm they don’t like to crawl across the sharp edges of the shell 

[Michael36]

Hi bit late to this thread, but I have exactly same issue. The shredding doesn’t look quite the same as the snail damage. Where I have got control of the snails around this plant, and I check under leaves almost every day catching the culprits, the shredding goes along with leaves curling and sticking together. Would some kind of spider do this? 
I am in east London, and my microspadix is otherwise doing very well. 

[Tomas]

  On 5/31/2024 at 1:45 PM, Michael36 said:

Hi bit late to this thread, but I have exactly same issue. The shredding doesn’t look quite the same as the snail damage. Where I have got control of the snails around this plant, and I check under leaves almost every day catching the culprits, the shredding goes along with leaves curling and sticking together. Would some kind of spider do this? 
I am in east London, and my microspadix is otherwise doing very well. 

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Looks like it could be caterpillars