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I've been finding these red things on the upper sides of one of my Carolina Reaper plants' leaves. No more than several at a time.

At first I thought them to be red spider mites but there's no sign of webbing on the undersides of the leaves. Also, they don't move and if they have legs, they're not visible to the naked eye. They're red, about 1 mm long, flat and seemingly segmented. Not sure if I'm looking at insects, arachnids or eggs of something.

Here's a picture. Sorry for the quality but I didn't have a proper camera at hand.

Red creatures I found on the leaves

I live in Poland, the peppers are currently growing in pots outdoors.

Please help me figure out what these are. Is this something to worry about?

toniedzwiedz
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Scale insect? - best treated with a shop bought insecticide- remember to spray it outside in a well ventilated place and wash your hands afterwards. hope it helps They do seem to have a persistence on house plants that I can't get rid of! but I'm sure they wouldn't go for the fruit themselves- they do leave a sticky residue on the leaves and stem- and have a knack of surviving winter! or you could just pick them off by hand- messy but effective. But not a sign of more problems, keep an eye out for fungus's as they can live off the sticky stuff and cover the leaves with sooty mould- which in case you could wash the leaves carefully with warm water and use a fungicide at first sign of trouble.

olantigh
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  • Thanks, I didn't realise such insects even existed. These look like Polish Cochineals and they are very interesting indeed. I'm hoping to get some fruit from these peppers so I'd rather not use pesticides. The shrubs are fairly small, under 50 cm tall and there's just 5 of them and I have just inspected literally every single leaf they have. Would this approach work in protecting my plants or is their presence a sign of a bigger problem (like a root infestation or many more tiny specimen that I simply cannot see)? – toniedzwiedz Aug 26 '17 at 17:00