[APWG] Microstegium disease symptoms in other plants

[ForestRuss at aol.com]

APWG:
 
During the past week the health issues related to some sort of disease in  
Microstegium has become more pronounced and it may be possible that whatever 
is  killing stiltgrass is also impacting some of our native forest plants 
in West  Virginia.
 
I have a very limited familiarity with specifics related to individual  
grass species but there does seem to be something of an extremely similar 
nature  impacting a common native grass, deer tongue, Panicum  clandestinum.   A 
while ago purple lesions showed up on some  plants and now many are starting 
to die.  The spots that show up on the  leaves start in a similar 
lenticular shape and form a spot that grows in  size....all things being relative, 
the spots are to scale for the difference in  width between the leaves of 
stiltgrass and deer tongue.
 

In many areas there is an increasing amount of deer tongue that is  dead

In some stands of deer tongue where plants can be 24" tall over half  the 
leaves on many plants
are dead.  In some areas there are purple lesions on every leaf  of the 
grass plants.
 
The sedge below is normally green this time of year.  Most of the sick  
looking 
plants have similar spots.  In some places the plants are  completely dead. 
The lesions are smaller
but appear similar to those in both deer tongue and stiltgrass.

I hope these images give some worthwhile background on the disease  
impacting stiltgrass
and some of its neighbors.  
 

Sick grass of multiple species, including stiltgrass.
 
In the coming days I look forward to some word on the cause of the  
disease.  I love what it is doing to stiltgrass but I have concerns for  some of 
our native plants.   I guess the best we can hope for is  that it is a native 
disease that just hurts Microstegium worse that it does  other plants. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Russ Richardson, Certified Forester
Crummies Creek Tree Farm
 
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090907/e51cc35c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 100_3017.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 70088 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090907/e51cc35c/attachment.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 100_3014.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 78335 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090907/e51cc35c/attachment-0001.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 100_3024.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 51829 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090907/e51cc35c/attachment-0002.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 100_3026.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 71447 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090907/e51cc35c/attachment-0003.jpe>