Rudbeckia flowers disfigured
Matthew C
Posts: 3
My Rudbeckia plants have not performed well. The stems are very short and the flowers are only forming just above or amongst the leaves (see photos below). I expected the plant to be 50cm but they are barely 30cm. Worse still the flowers are disfigured (see pictures). I grew them from seed last spring and didn't see them flower that year so now they have finally arrived this year I'm really disappointed after all the hard work. In addition my wife bought me a mature Rudbeckia which did well last year but appears identical to the ones I grew from seed. So it must be a soil or watering issue. They are in different locations (full sun and partial) around my garden (many seeds took so I was hoping for lots of bunches). The only other thing I can think of is the mulch I put on the beds last year (http://www.compostdirect.com/mulch/p25). I have some left over and it is full of mushrooms and I've had a few mushrooms appear around the garden but very few- which I removed. So perhaps this is giving the plans a disease? However I have many other herbaceous/perennial plants which are fine. The only other clue is my ECHINACEA PURPUREA have disfigured flowers also (see photos below). But they are not so bad.
I'd really appreciate some advice how to fix this because I'm so disappointed after watching them every day as they grew lovely leaf material only to get poor flowers.
Posts
This could be capsid damage (which I think I am also suffering with in my garden). The little blighters probe growing tips with their mouthparts, causing no visible damage at the time, but causing leaves or flowers to grow in a distorted way. Very annoying as by the time you notice it, the damage is already done!
A few of my plants also have had flowers form very low down within the plant this year and I've put this down to the weather at the time when flower buds were forming. Temperatures have been all over the place in my part of the world (Sheffield), especially overnight, so perhaps the plants didn't want to push their heads up and out into the cold
Could this have happened to you as well Matthew?
Hi
@WillDB: thanks for the info on capsid. I haven't seen this bug. What I had a lot of this year was white foamy bubbly spit on the plants.This is spittlebug apparently. I've read that they don't cause much harm. But perhaps they were guilty.
@paulk2: that could be the cause but I live in Hertfordshire and we've had pretty warmish weather.
I'll just have to hold hope that it doesn't happen next year. I hope not because it's so frustrating after having waited so long to see them burst into life.
Cheers