I'm not sure what this is officially called, but does anyone know how to treat it? The rest of the tree looks fine but a couple of the limbs going up have black bark and no growth. I've seen it around my neighborhood in Houston.

In my experience this is caused by aphids. They secrete a sugary substance that allows the black stuff to grow. I treated mine with an insect soak and it helped eventually. Took a couple of years and repeated treatments to get rid of it completely.

Those little white dots are bark scales. Soil drench with imidacloprid once a year and you'll be fine. The tree has to grow out of the black so the appearance will stay the same until it does.

We bought a box of lady bugs off of Amazon and released them on ours. They work really good.

Its crapemyrtle barkscale. Can still see remnants of the infestation. Drench root zone with a good dose of imidacloprid. Water it in good because sun light will degrade it. Do it now while plant is putting on new growth to promote take up by roots. One application in the spring for a couple of years and they will be gone.

Thanks everyone. We did the root drench and I sprayed all the black areas with neem oil. I'll plan to do the root drench every spring until it's gone. They are all greening nicely and hopefully the blooms will come okay.