Marty: It's not that water cannot touch the blooms, but they should not
stay wet. Good air circulation is the key to keeping the blooms dry.
Another reason to design your bonsai with "spaces for the birds to fly
through." That, and not crowding your benches with too many trees, etc.

Alan Walker
http://bonsai-bci.com http://LCBSBonsai.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Marty Haber
Yes - I remember Ben Oki saying that, when azaleas are in bloom, keep
water
off the blossoms. How one does this, if he/she has 50 azaleas, is
another
thing to think about.
Marty
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nina Shishkoff"
As a plant pathologist, I'd opt for your second guess. If you had a
lot
of rain and your tree is in a spot where it doesn't get good air
circulation, it is susceptible to Botrytis flower blight. Botrytis is
ubiquitous, so the only way to avoid it is to change environmental
conditions (you can use fungicides, but they don't give good coverage on
quickly-opening parts like buds and flowers.
Nina Shishkoff
-----Original Message-----
But, when they open (before they are fully open) the edges of the
flowers are turning brown and ruining the image. Or, they may have
rotted because the flowers buds as they were breaking collected too much
moisture and rotted. (We've had a lot of rain recently.)

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