Hippeastrum papilio, step 2

[lblanchard]

The orange blotches on my Hippeastrum papilio were very ugly. They may be a relatively treatable orange blotch, or they may be the dreaded Stagonosporus curtisii.Treatment for the latter is iffy at best, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. A couple days ago I cut off the foliage and allowed the wounds to heal for a couple days. Yesterday I pulled them from the pots , washed off the soil, and teased apart the roots -- a bit like dealing with yarn after that cat has been at it. All this on my front stoop, wearing rubber gloves. I wanted all the contaminated stuff out of the house.

Now they're drying in a room in which I never have plants of any description -- no light. (It's the office supply / file room on the third floor.) In a day or so I'll start the process of decontaminating them. Fungicide first, because spores. That's also the easier thing, I think. Fill a basin with  the Thiomyl suspension in 85F water. They need to stay in it for an hour, so I'll shove the basin in the oven. The pilot light keeps the oven at a pleasant 90F, which is close enough for rock and roll.

After that, they get a 2 to 3 hour treatment at 104F-114F to kill any of the tarsenomid mites that may infest them.

DISCLAIMER: I've never done this before for this fungus. I heat-treated a bunch of hippeastrum in 2011 as a general prophylactic but that was only for an hour. This is all new territory for me.

First, the leaves. These were photographed April 13 and got significantly worse in the next couple weeks.





By last week, leaves were going yellow and limp and the orange blight was much more pronounced. I didn't want to take pictures. It was too depressing.

Now, here are my bulbs, cleaned of most of their soil and drying out on a towel:



The one on the left is the bulb Val gave me, and I suspect it's the one that brought in the infection. The other two are from Telos Rare Bulbs, which is known for its scrupulous plant hygiene. The two offsets on Val's bulb are almost as big as the mother bulb. Strictly speaking, they aren't offsets -- the bulb is dividing. The new leaves were coming out of the bulb itself when it arrived. If the plant were healthy I might attempt to separate them, but they share the same basal plate, which would have to be cut -- and I'm reluctant to create any open wounds. The two from Telos were planted in the same pot, and it took me a good half an hour to disentangle the roots. Everyone has offsets; if/when the plants are healthy again I'll be doing some surgery.

So why am I doing all this? Because I'm damned if I'm going to let a fungus get the better of me. Also, the Telos bulbs were expensive and I don't like to spend money on plants, so jeebus. Also, H. papilio are notoriously difficult to raise and to bring into bloom, so they're a challenge. But mostly because I don't buy plants; I adopt them and I'm not letting them go without a struggle. As a reminder, this is the payoff (assuming they ever bloom again). This is the bulb Val gave me -- you can see the new plants coming out of the bulb:



In retrospect, I should have seen in that one twisted leaf the signs of trouble ahead, but I thought it was just trauma from shipping.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Is there any way to tell if it's the really dreaded fungus or the less dreaded one?
Good luck with the elimination process. I would be doing teh same thing for what it's worth...fighting the good fight, I mean.
What are the little sprouts around the bulb in the last picture?

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Thyme or marjoram, I think. I tossed them in on a whim.