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Peter Ashby · 26-07-2006, 08:24 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening

Chris Hogg wrote:

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:20:59 GMT, (Peter
Ashby) wrote:

Recently we bought a dwarf azalea to plant in a planter box out the
front. The day after planting it I noticed something curious, an
enlarged leaf with a silvery bloom on it looking like a tumour or the
result of some virus infection. The end of the leaf was grossly swollen
and stiff. I removed it but since then I have spotted and removed about
two dozen of these of various sizes doing some damage to the new growth
in the process.

Do the panel have any suggestions as to what this may be and how best to
counter it?

Peter
Azalea leaf gals. A fungus disease. Pick off the distorted leaves and
bin or burn them. Spray young growth with a copper fungicide, eg
bordeaux mixture or similar, or mancozeb. Dithane 459 (?number)
available in garden centres and is mancozeb under another name. But
you may not have much young growth at this time of year, so do it next
year for certain.

Thanks for that, if it's a fungal that makes me happier since it means
the plant is basically sound.

Camellias suffer from a similar fungus, but in their case the galls
are the size of apples! We had one on one of our camellias earlier
this year.

Interesting, I've had camelias and not seen that, lucky I guess.

Peter
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