I have some sunshine ligustrum that have gotten really huge and I finally trimmed and shaped them. And I discovered THIS on one of them!! What is this?! Is this scale, or some kind of fungus? What can I do? It’s really bad… is this plant going to die? :(
Those are a soft scale insect/mealybugs. You can spray on isopropyl alcohol (i do not know if it's supposed to be diluted or not) to kill them, or put some ladybugs onto the plant (you can buy them at butterfly farms or some nurseries, though I've found just moving 6-10 wild ones onto an affected plant to be effective for natural predation.) Also if you happen to live somewhere in its range, try the mealybug destroyer (pictured)
