On Sun, 31 May 2009, Spider wrote

"Kate Brown" wrote in message
...
I've just uploaded some garden photos at
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mehitabel.snaps

It's a very ordinary South London back garden, nothing exotic and full of
mistakes, but we are fond of it and if the wind weren't blowing quite so
hard I'd be out there now reading the paper, sniffing the extraordinarily
fragrant climbing hydrangeas and listening to the mad birds.

There's another album there too called 'what's wrong? and I would be
extremely grateful if someone could give me a hint as to what might be
going wrong here - I wondered if it was too much hard water, but you've
all reassured me on that. On various plants, unrelated to each other as
far as I know, we're getting a kind of leaf shrivelling - the hollyhocks
are worst, but the heuchera and small fuchsia are also bad, and it affects
some pelargoniums and some roses as well. I've attached some photos from
August of last year where the roses were affected, though as they've come
back unaffected as yet this year, I don't know whether it's all related or
not.

There's also a problem with some roses where something is nibbling at the
leaf stem and breaking it off, but I can't see anything and they have been
well and truly sprayed.

--
Kate B

PS 'elvira' is spamtrapped - please reply to 'elviraspam' at cockaigne dot
org dot uk if you
want to reply personally

Hi Kate,

I've read Bob's comments and am, in part at least, inclined to agree.
However, the chemical spray certainly didn't make those holes in the rose
leaves. I wonder if the many little holes are capsid damage?, but of the
bigger holes I'm not so sure. Could the distorted rose bloom be caused by
a tortrix caterpiller? I see similar damage in my roses sometimes. The
caterpiller descends from overhanging trees on a silken line and eats its
way into the bud, subsequently distorting the bloom as it opens. Another
possibility is the chafer beetle, whose chomping habits can leave similar
damage.

I occasionally see Heuchera leaves like yours on my own plants. I don't use
chemicals anywhere near them, so spray drift certainly doesn't explain what
I see. Depending on current circumstances, I either put it down to drought
(not enough hydraulics to inflate the opening leaf properly), or insect
damage. It doesn't seem to affect all the leaves, so I just nip off the
damaged one(s).

It's difficult to tell with the hollyhock. As Bob says, it does look a bit
like rust damage, except that none is shown. Neither can we see mildew,
which would have the same affect. So it could be spray drift, it could be
virus injected by a sap-sucking insect or, perhaps, mosaic virus. I can't
lay my hands on an image of mosaic damage, but I believe that distortion is
possible without the usual colour streaking (which is most usually seen in
Abutilon).

Having also looked at your 'good' pictures and admired your lovely garden, I
think I can help you by identifying the mystery 'pretty but prickly'
red-flowered bush. It looks like Ribes speciosum (sometimes called
fuchsia-flowering gooseberry).

I'm pleased to note that you grow Aquilegias. We love them and our garden
is almost full of them just now. I'd love to get hold of A. longissima;
it's yellow with extraordinarily long spurs. One day ...

Well, it's way past my bedtime, so I'm switching off now. Night. (Yawn)

Spider

Thanks for this - I've had a google on capsid bug damage and it does
indeed look suspicious. I can't see any bugs at the moment, though. Do
you know if there's anything we can do to foil the little blighters?
One site I saw suggested malathion but that seems highly toxic to bees -
perhaps if one tried to keep it to the leaves or closed buds?


--
Kate B

PS 'elvira' is spamtrapped - please reply to 'elviraspam' at cockaigne dot org dot uk if you
want to reply personally