Sunday, September 14, 2008

ACHOO?

Tricyrtis Sinonome is really an impressive tricyrtis; the plants are a full three foot tall, with large, thick, deep green leaves. The flowers are dark beauties; light lilac with numerous inky purple blotches and spots. The plant is thought to be a hybrid between tricyrtis formosana and hirta, and it certainly has the hallmarks of that cross; rather upright plants with a lot of foliage and the flowers are held in upright sprays and are deeply spotted. However, the plant undoubtedly is infected with a virus (as are a number of other toad lily crosses like Dark Wonder and Raspberry Mousse); the virus causes the flowers to coalesce their spots into blotches of color.
There is no consensus on what, if any, actual harm the virus causes to the plants; will these hybrids over a number of years begin to decline in health, or is the virus just a case of the sniffles? Tricyrtis Sinonome presently is as healthy and vigorous looking as one could hope to see in a tricyrtis... time will tell.

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Comments:
Don, is it very close in proximity to other tricyrtis? That was the gist of what I understood from Chris Wilson of Hallson Garden. That's why I got rid of my infected plants... they were within 10 feet of the other new ones I'd gotten this Spring, and I didn't want the virus to spread.
 
Shady... this one isn't; it's probably thirty foot away from any other tricyrtis. I wonder about plant-sucking insects though. What's to stop one from flying thirty or forty feet?
Don
 
I'm not enough of a purist to destroy an infected plant like that as long as the plant appears to be healthy. If I hadn't read your post, I wouldn't even have suspected it had a virus.
But you gotta do what you gotta do! Pretty, all the same. My 'Sinonome' isn't blooming yet.
 
Kylee... I haven't destroyed any of my infected toadies yet, either... but I'm thinking about it. If I see the virus show up in any previously non-infected plant, they'll go!
Don
 
Hello from Dublin, Ireland.

I've just found your blog and am delighted with your photos.
 
Birch Wood... glad you stopped by. Living in lovely Ireland, I'd say you were "slumming" by stopping by my Iowa blog :o)

don
 
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