Tarsonemid mites

Symptoms
The symptoms are distorted leaves that are often brown and rusty-looking at the base. Flowers can also be distorted, hairy-looking, with a darker colour than usual and blotchy.

Spot them
Tarsonemid mites are hard to see to the naked eye. They are tiny (up to 0.25 mm) long, with rounded, shiny cream-brown bodies. They are fairly slow moving and feed inside buds, shoot tips and in leaf sheaths.