Buckinghamshire,
United Kingdom 
Hi there,
I wrote in a few weeks agoregarding my Fatsia. It is still worrying me. The leaves are curling from the edges and some of them, even the young green ones have black kind of grainy collection on the underside of the leaves (sooty mould?). They slowly turn yellow and as this happens I can see small brown dots on them. Some of the leaves have blotches of dark brown/yellow on them. The veins of some of the leaves have brown dots in a row. A few days agon when I went to spray it with a general purpose bug spray I found millions of ants crawling all over the plant. These of course disappeared once I had sprayed the leaves top and bottom but I fear the plant might be infested with the dreaded mealy bug. There was anothe hardy evergreen plant in this position which over about two years gradually died and prior to that I had a conifer which basically just stood there and refused to grow loosing some of its branches. I am wondering if its a bug that lives in the soil? Next to the Fatsia I have a Viburnum Tinus which seems to be trouble free and is flourishing fine. I know I have raised a number of issues here but if anyone has any idea what is going on I would be grateful.
Ramnik
19 Jul, 2010
Answers
Many thanks for your response. If problem persists I may explore that avenue.
23 Jul, 2010
I'm wondering what's under the soil, if you've had three different plants there and none have thrived. You may need to remove the plant and excavate the area to see if there's a problem further down of some kind, like a collection of aggregate or a solid piece of concrete or a sewage pipe or something.
The ants are an indicator that your plant has aphids, probably blackfly from your description of the underside of the leaves. The ants cause no harm, they run over the plant to get to the aphids to collect their honeydew. Seems you've done the right thing anyway by spraying with a bug spray, which should clear the aphids.
22 Jul, 2010