Is it normal for plants to have scale when you buy them?

gozaimasu

NibblyPig said:

Thanks for the reply. It was this one Euonymus fortunei 'Emerald 'n Gold' hedge | Hedges Direct

I have this and it doesn't suffer from anything. As others have said, I don't think this is scale insect.

I think a hard prune is in order; best checkout the RHS for the best time to prune them. Prune out any reverted branches or it will lose the variegation.

NibblyPig

Thanks for the advice much appreciated, panic over, perhaps. 

Katiehound

I had a huge scale infestation on a well established Euonymous shrub a couple of years ago: that isn't what you have.
At the time the plant was reaching over 12ft up a wall & dying off- I ended up cutting it down to almost the ground. Leaves, stems, trunk werre smothered with the teeny insects. Unfortunately I didn't realise what was happening.
All the branches went to the dump and I watered on some systemic insect killer. Amazingly the plant survived but it's only about a foot high now!
You can grow cuttings easily over winter- but of course they will take several years to get established & to any size at all.

Oh, and I don't know how the wretched scale got there.
 It was also on another evergreen in a different part of the garden. That was chopped down completely- never to return.