In article m, Shiva
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 09:24:35 -0700, Cass
wrote:

Wherever the plant sends out new growth, it
kills off the foliage between the new growth and the old bloom as well
as the leaf set of the bud that sprouted. All that foliage spots before
it drops. Defoliation isn't a problem here, tho.

Cass how can that be? If anyone has bs bad enough, the plant drops all
its leaves? Or do you just mean on Mutabilis? Mine has not
defoliated--it has too many leaves.

It goes through bloom-start new growth-blackspot old foliage and drop
it-grow more-bloom-start new growth cycles. I've never seen blackspot
bad enough that all the leaves drop. Just doesn't happen here. Maybe I
don't have enough blackspot-prone roses to completely defoliate. There
is blackspot, just not that much.


Just the HTs and GFs and FBs are
doing that. Big time. The babies look the worst.

Babies get the most spot here too. It's got to be the containers
harboring fungi.

The little plant in a
5 gallon is growing so fast there's a considerable amount of foliage
being killed off.

This is the weirdest concept. I'm going to have to think about this
one. I'll now be looking sideways at my Mutabilis!

It's not mysterious. It's a hormonal thing. The plant directs the
auxins to the new growth tips, in effect starving some older growth.
Take a look at every new stem that grows out of a basal on Granada.
You'll see it. The bottom leaflet is fine until after bloom. Then a new
growth bud somewhere will break and you'll probably see two leaflets
suddenly age and die. The two leaflets that will die are (1) the one
just below the new bud growth and (2) the one where the stem first
broke out of the basal. During that dying process they often show
blackspot or other fungal disease (tho the good ones just yellow), just
like healthy leaflets you cut off and drop on the ground.