Well Good Morning to all of you who have added your helpful information to me while I slept. I looked out the window this morning at my now very sparse EDF and then came in here and read all of your input and I think I have decided that I will treat her to/with/for another year in place. Today I will gather every possible leaf that I might have missed, put another several inches of soil on top of that and then use Liqui-Cop to drench the canes and the soil. In the spring and summer I will pay attention to every leaf and see if I can keep the disease at bay. If she resists my attempts at renovation, I will dig her out of her current place, put her in a big pot, and see if that helps. I'm really not into giving up on her yet, although I was very tempted at some point in yesterday's conversations. Gee, I may have painted that shed behind her blue just to set off her lovely color....? For the record, the place she is in is not optimal. She's on the south side of a shed with an overhanging roof. She does get drip irrigation, but there are yellow flag iris crowding her roots (I try to keep them out, but they are pushy), and this year I made a tactical error by crowding rather a lot of potted plants around her base. Oh yeah, and the chickens do love to take dust baths in her shade. Poor girl. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to share your experiences with me. I've had roses for too long to be so ignorant of what I am really doing with and to them.

Wow. Thanks, y'all. I'll address the comments *about maybe it being dormancy and life cycle: could be... but the lilies I see in the ditches don't look aweful like mine. (My neighbor's look great, too... but they're Stella d'Oro.) I have cut them down around August, and they grow right back up, & go through the whole streaking cycle again (but no flowers). *about the plans being extreme. Well... I'm dividing and transplanting them anyway (I need them elsewhere: where they will get merciless sun all day, and be thinned out)... So really the only extra step is the dipping/soaking, whatever. And hopefully that'll save me any work later in the summer. So, if I'm covering all bases... will it HARM the plants to go into a bleach bath, regardless of whether it's dormancy or fungal infection? If not... then what's the concentration? And how about the fungicide? What's with the cornmeal? Thanks, y'all, for helping! Charla

The first time an article about rust appeared in the AHS Journal ( and that was the first year we'd heard about it on the e-mail robin from the big growers in Fl- the first year that some of them got it from somewhere in Central or South America, and it sounded BAD when those initial reports came in. I remember one man talking about digging up his entire garden.) People were panicking big time! The VERY day that Journal arrived with pictures of rust and how to recognize it, I found it in my garden. Talk about panic!! I went outside - it was probably about 95 degrees that day and I was so psyched out that I forgot to wear sunscreen and got a horrible sun burn.... but at any rate, I started cutting ALL of the foliage back in the garden and putting it in huge black trash bags and dipping my clippers in bleach solution between each plant. Ugh! I can remember cutting, sweating, and all the time tears were running down my face. I didn't stop until many hours later that night. I can't remember now if I got the whole garden cut back that night or not.Back then it was nearly 1000 cultivars, but the whole garden was cut back w/i 24 hours to about 3" of foliage tops and then the entire garden was sprayed with fungicide even though I'd only seen rust on about 3 plants. Ugh! The very next day I sent a leaf sample to the State Plant Pathologist in Richmond, VA for diagnosis. My garden was the second "official" case of rust that year in the State of VA. I had quite a few nice conversations with the State plant pathologist ( who strangely, turned out to be a former student of my mother's!)but in the intervening years, have learned that it really isn't a reason for that kind of panic. I did learn more than I really wanted to know about rust that first year in all those conversations with the state pathologist. I do spray, alternately using Heritage, Banner Baxx, Daconil, and various other fungicides during the season. However, I'm a lazy sprayer and rust has never overwintered here on the edge of zones 6/7. I continue to buy plants from the South and there's always the risk it will appear, but that is a risk I'm willing to take nowadays. Some years it shows up here - but usually not until September,long after peak bloom and visitors. This year, I have found it on one FL. plant but so far it hasn't spread. Have sprayed a couple of times since then. Am not about to get out and cut back the whole garden like I did all those years ago. When was that - about 2003?

thanks...before I got your reply, I looked up what to do on the internet...and found I should soak the plants for 10 minutes in a 10% clorox solution. Since I needed to get these plants in the ground as quick as possible, I stripped off the leaves until I no longer saw any rust. I hope they survive....none of the other daylily orders that I have received looked like these. The vendor did not answer my urgent e-mail, (and still hasn't). It is too late for photographs, at least for now. It is somewhat consoling to hear that daylily rust is only found on the leaves. Maybe the fungicide they used prior to shipment caused this rusty looking stuff? I certainly hope so.