I have three Cowslip plants which have flowered every year without issue. This year they flowered as usual but then this has happened on all three plants. It's as though each flower head has grown little leaves.
A quick trawl of the internet led me to a newspaper I never want to be associated with but it gave me some information that led me to the RHS and this: https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/phytoplasmas
Trawl down the page to "Symptoms" and you'll find this Greening of flowers – this can occur in two ways, either the petals
themselves turning green (virescence) or the flower parts being replaced
by leaf-like structures (phyllody).
As you will see, the causes can be due to environmental factors or the above mentioned disease (phytoplasmas).
Only you can decide the fate of your cowslips based on the information available on these two RHS pages.
If they were mine I'd whip them out and burn them then encase the ashes in concrete but I am wont to get a bit paranoid about anything strange in the garden. You may wish to give them another chance.
Phyllody certainly seems to fit the symptoms. Reading through it appears as though if it was caused by environmental factors then not all flowers would be affected, which they are, so it seems more likely to be disease.
I'd hate to destroy them as they look lovely every year but for the sake of the rest of the garden it might be for the best. Tough decision!
They are such beautiful spring flowers that it seems a pity to lose them but sometimes we have to be hard hearted and get rid of much loved plants. I suppose the upside to this is, we get a chance to grow something new.
Some of mine are doing the same, it’s almost time to cut them right back to the ground anyway, they’ll probably be ok next year. I think it’s a form of fasciation, could be due to weather changes, cold spells, warm spells, wet spells poor plants don’t know what they’re supposed to do. I’m sure they’ll be fine though and come up as usual.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
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Phyllody certainly seems to fit the symptoms. Reading through it appears as though if it was caused by environmental factors then not all flowers would be affected, which they are, so it seems more likely to be disease.
I'd hate to destroy them as they look lovely every year but for the sake of the rest of the garden it might be for the best. Tough decision!
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."