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In the 1890s many smaller growers struggled to afford expensive and elaborate controls to combat pests such as San Jose scale and plum curculio.

Maple and oak, the other most abundant street trees, are also at risk from pests such as San Jose scale and Japanese beetles.

Roses first came to Tyler in the 1920s, prompted by an agricultural disaster: A decade earlier, quadraspidiotus perniciosus — better known as the San Jose scale — decimated the city’s peach crop.

Melander himself had run into difficulty with the San Jose scale, for some years satisfactorily controlled by spraying with lime sulfur.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away in fruit orchards near Provo, Utah, farmer Alan Riley fights off the San Jose scale, an aphid-like insect that sucks sap from his apple, peach, and cherry trees.