[APWG] Microstegium disease symptoms in other plants
ForestRuss at aol.com
ForestRuss at aol.com
Mon Sep 7 22:29:44 CDT 2009
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
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