Adult female of the usual peg-top shape, greenish-yellow in colour; abdomen ending in two conspicuous median lobes, with a number of scaly serrated hairs, as in A. nerii. Five groups of spinnerets: uppermost group with four orifices; the remainder, seven or eight. Some specimens show only four groups.
Adult male unknown.
Habitat—On Sophora tetraptera (Kowhai), Port Hills, Canterbury.
Only a few species of Aspidiotus are reported with five groups of spinnerets. The present insect differs from all of them in the scaly serrated hairs of the abdomen; none of the others has more than a few spines.
Female puparium more or less, but never quite, circular; sometimes flat, but more usually convex; pellicles more or less marginal.
Male puparium elongated, the pellicle at one end; a longitudinal carina, or keel, appears in the middle.
Groups of spinnerets, five.
Mr. Comstock (Entom. Rep., Cornell Univ., 1883, p. 85) remarks that, when the pellicles of the female of this genus are marginal, it might be difficult to distinguish it from Chionaspis, as the male puparia are alike in both. As regards the species observed hitherto in New Zealand this difficulty has not occurred.