and you looked on the back of the leaves for the sucking insects??? or remnants of such from last year????

no evergreen holds its leaves forever ... and its the interior ones that are normal shedding...

it can be increased by drought the prior year... an extremely cold winter.. and transplant ...

how cold was your winter???? .. though i doubt that is a z7 SC issue ... and you would expect exterior leaves more affected ...

how bad is the sapsucker damage.. how about a pic ... a few single holes.. or major bark removal????

ken

Ken-I really don't see any signs of current or past insects. The tree is 15 years in the same spot. Not sure about drought last summer, but the winter and spring have been very wet.

We did have an ice storm this winter, and the trees do have a lot of brown outer leaves from ice/temp damage that I didn't post. The light green leaves seem to be unrelated.

The sapsucker damage is extensive. Here is one spot I took a photo of, but its not the worst:

In the last pic of your first post, one can see a previous growth flush with the stippling, and then a more recent growth flush that looks normal. This would suggest a barrage of sucking insects (mites) during that stage of growth (previous). I don't think I've ever seen Nellie Stevens get mite damage, but that's what it looks like to me. Has it been abnormally hot and dry in your location in summer?

You said 'eventually moves down to the tips of the branches' -- but you didn't say how quickly. Within a few weeks? Within a year? A few years?

Maybe Tea Scale. Spray with Neem or dormant oil one week apart. Very common in hollies

Scale is difficult to control, so give up or let up!

There is no coating or insects on the leaves. The stippling is coming from within. Could that still be scale?

Dave- sorry I missed your comment earlier. We generally have very hot humid summers and vey rainy springs.

As far as the damage moving down the stem, I probably misspoke there. The damage just appears to have done that based on the way it looks, but we've only lived at this house for 9 months, and I didn't examine the hollies closely last summer.

Sap suckers really don't harm a tree. They makes holes so that the sap can run, which attracts insects and then the sapsucker revisits and drinks his meal.

I didn't know that about sapsucker's; thanks for the info.

Looking at photos online, it really doesn't look like tea scale, but I will keep my eye on the shrubs as the season progresses.

So I took another look at the hollies today, and noticed that on many of the diseased leaves, there is a granular substance coating the underside. This is almost invisible to the eye, but I took a photo and enlarged it a bit:

It feels dry and dusty and can be wiped off easily.

I'm going to start googling....

You could take this sample to your Extension Office. Every county has one. They can determine what it is. The scale insect itself is very small and it is generally diagnosed by the damage and not the insect itself.