This cannas was sold to me as the "madame butterfly" variety, however, it looks nothing like that variety. What variety is it? Also, the leaf varigation..is it the virus?
Thanks, Danielle Zone 7a
Cannas Variety ID and is it diseased?
I see that it kinda resembles the cannas posted by dirus the "florence vaughn" however it is not as boldly marked with more of a faded appearance. I guess whatever variety, its pretty. This is my first cannas growing. Due to buying bad rhizomes (tubers?) from local stores at the end of the season I didnt have a large sucess rate. I plated 4 of the pictures cannas, 2 came up. I planted 5 Wyoming only 1 came up. I planted a mix of 15 President and Richard Wallace and NONE came up. In fact the rhizomes completly disappeared. Locally, people have the Richard Wallace variety grown everywhere in these huge clumps that look like they desperatly need to be divided.
I can't help you with a name sorry...but yes it does appear to be virused..it is incurable but you can mask the symptoms to a degree with good growing conditions and they can still produce reasonably good flowerheads ..but virus is very easily spread...either through insects ie. aphids(grasshoppers )etc?..and the use of cutting/digging implements and handling infected plants. If you are happy to keep these plants then keep them well away from any healthy ones...Use bleach to sterilize any implements used on them... I personally wouldn't take the risk and would destroy any that appeared to be virused...but there are others out there who may feel they are worth the effort...hope this helps. Cheers
It is virused. And I am not sure it is Madame Butterfly.
Virus changes the blooms sometimes, but I don't remember the spotting in MB.
There are so many beautiful unvirused cannas available, why waste your efforts with this one that will never get better.
Is the Canna Virus species specific? Will it affect other types of plants or only cannas? Those are the only two cannas I have there. I only have one other cannas (wyoming) clear on the other side of the property, and it is looking fine. Does the virus live in the soil? If I was to get rid of those 2 I would hate to plant others there just for them to pick it up from the soil.
Thanks,
Danielle
Canna virus is species specific, and yes it will infect other cannas planted in the same bed.
I have a bed with infected Canna. I make sure I dead head them regularly and feed them much more than all the others. They still look pretty good and they produce lots of blooms. I just make sure I use one hand pruner for that bed alone and never use it anywhere else.
Will it affect others in the bed if dug up already...does it still live in the soil after the diseased cannas is gone?
That I couldn't tell you. Maybe someone with more botany in their background could.
I have been told that the virus does not live in dead tissue. It would still be wise to remove any diseased ones from the ground.
It could possibly be Journey's End...although it's hard to tell... Many canna now have the virus, as do some of mine after recieving some that had it and it spread. I'm not going to share or sell mine, so I have kept mine up and running because they still bloom beautifully, even if the leaves look bad from time to time.