[1978tbird]

This may sound like the dumbest remedy you ever heard of but hey, it worked for me on my large magnolia at our northern home in western NY. Scale is very hard to get under control once it gets a good grip on your tree. I had limited success with spray once the scale set in plus the dormant oil would wash off after a good rain our two. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Believe it or not I blasted the scale off my tree using a pressure washer (as weird as that sounds). It did a great job and did not harm the tree at all. Be sure not to use a real fine spray - that will damage the bark but a fan-pattern should work fine. (Use just enough pressure to remove the scale.) The washer will even remove (most) of the black coloring that the magnolia develops from the scale. With the right spray pattern the leaves will not be damaged or fall from the tree. As for the (fuzzy)white spots on the leaves - you can purchase a systemic spray from your local garden store that should take car of that - I believe Ortho has something available but I don't recall the name of it right now. I can look it up if anyone is interested. The systemic spray is absorbed into the tree through the leaves and the white stuff winds up eatting the spray thus killing it. My magnolia was in real tough shape about three years ago and I thought I was going to lose it for sure so I figured I had nothing to lose. After pressure washing it and applying the spray I cleared up quickly. I followed that with a treatment of dormant oil spray in the fall and the following spring and the tree has been very healthy ever since. Regular dormant oil application each season seems to have prevented further problems. I know this is unconventional but it did work real well for my sick magnolia. It's now over 20 ft tall. Good luck!