Help! What's afflictingmy palm trees in such a horrible way?

Looks like a mix of powdery mildew and bugs! The new growth is all distorted!

And here is the new growth...coming out already browned and sick!!!

Maybe mealy bugs? I usually only get them on indoor plants but they can happen on outdoor plants too. Or else there are wooly aphids and cottony cushion scale which I think are both whitish and fuzzy too. I'd start by taking the garden hose and blasting off as much as you can. For mealies I usually dip a q-tip in rubbing alcohol and rub them off, but depending on how large the plant is and how many you get off with the hose that may not be a viable approach. If they're aphids insecticidal soap ought to take care of them, but I'm not sure if it'll do mealies and scale. Normally for scale I would use neem but I seem to remember someone posting that neem's not supposed to be used on palms (I could be remembering wrong though, I don't grow palms or the other plants they were mentioning, so it was one of those things that I half noticed but didn't really pay attention to)

Ecrane, you are so sweet to come to the rescue! It's not aphids, that I know. (that's the ONLY thing I know!)
Do mealy bugs affect new growth like that? And if I use the hose, is that going to transfer the bugs to the cannas that are planted under and around the palm trees>

I honestly don't know if the other symptoms you're seeing are related to the bugs or not, it could be something different, insects often move in to take advantage of plants that are already being stressed by something else. Hopefully someone who's more familiar with the various things that can go wrong with palms will have some more ideas. As far as hosing the bugs off--it's a strong enough blast of water that if they do land on your cannas they should be squished and dead already. I use the garden hose as my primary method of pest control and I've never had anything spread to another plant that way.

I am googling mealy bugs and trying to figure out if it's that...

ecrane, I think it could be mealy bugs now...but do they do that much damage??? I coulnt bare this anymore and today I took a sample to the agricultural extension at the county ....these guys are a joke...it will take "up to 10 business days" to get an answer from them!!! arghh!

I've never had mealy bugs do that much damage. But I've never had them on palms, and I've always caught them before they got out of control so I don't know the extent of damage they could do on a palm if they get out of control. I was hoping someone who knew more about palms might come along and have some other ideas on what's causing your symptoms...you might try posting in the Palms & Cycads forum and see if you get more responses there.

I actually did..not much info so far...

Hi Ecrane! Got a letter from the agric extension already....The result: RED DATE SCALE (s type of hard scale they say). You were right! And you know what....I realized yesterday the fishtail palms on the other side of the yard are covered with that freaky thing too! What do I do now?

Did they give you any suggestions? First thing I'd do is call them and find out what they would recommend since I'm sure they've seen this before. My solution for the types of scale I've had is blasting with the hose to dislodge as many as I can, then a treatment with neem (but other people have been surprised that I could get rid of scale with the garden hose, so I think some types tend to hold on better than others so that may not work for you) I think I mentioned earlier that I'd seen someone post that you're not supposed to use neem on palms, so I'd look for some other insecticide that lists scale and can be used on palms.

Thanks Ecrane, I will check with them too. They sent me a bunch of general info on scales, but the info was very generalized, didn't even suggest treatment for whatever "red scale" is! : )

Sevin, Esteem and horticultural oil can help with scale. See more info in this article:

http://citrusent.uckac.edu/resistan.htm

Thanks Luis! What kind of horticultural oil do you use?

Sunspray Ultra-fine

OK!