This scale insect is frequently very injurious to maples, particularly soft maples, and is also sometimes found on other plants. It is located on the twigs and resembles a small tuft of cotton protruding from beneath a small brown scale.

The insect is not often very noticeable during the spring months, the cottony portion not having developed. During the summer, however, the cottony threads form, and among these the eggs and young occur. The young soon leave the cotton where they were born, and pass to the leaves and settle down, mainly along the veins, to feed. Each now secretes a covering scale, and, before the leaves drop, the insects travel back to the twigs to pass the winter. In the spring they grow rapidly, and in June produce the cottony threads, making them more noticeable.

Brushing infested twigs with a brush or broom wet with kerosene emulsion has been suggested as a treatment for this insect, but winter spraying with about twenty per cent, kerosene emulsion has given the most successful results.