Rusty bluebells

Bluebell rust symptoms

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.

About Fay Newbery

PhD student in the Plant Pathology Research Group.
This entry was posted in Flowering Plants, Fungi, Liliaceae, Plant Pathology Research Group, Plants and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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