Bluebell rust symptoms
Like many other plants bluebells suffer from a rust disease. Bluebell rust causes yellowed areas on the leaves filled with dark brown/black pustules.
Some rusts have as many as five different kinds of spores in a complicated life-cycle that can involve growing on different hosts at different times of the year. Uromyces muscari, the fungus that causes bluebell rust, produces only one type of spore (teliospores) and so completes its life cycle on one host. The teliospores are capable of infecting surrounding leaves. They are also able to over-winter, so can produce fresh infections the following year.
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- Telia of Uromyces muscari
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- Teliospores breaking out on the lower leaf surface
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- A single teliospore with its stalk.
