Coneflowers growing strangely

16 years ago

Last year I planted a few clumps of white coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea.) They grew well and came back strongly this year. Since I donÂt have much experience with coneflowers, IÂm a bit confused as to whatÂs happening in one of the clumps, where about half the flowers are growing in a very strange way. Instead of the usual flowers, the center of the flowers grew normally but in the place of drooping petals, there are small stems on which miniature normal-shaped flowers grew. Each main flower looks like the sun in an elementary school model of the solar system, complete with satellite flower planets!

I donÂt know if IÂve explained the situation well (a photo would make it easier but IÂm not sure how to upload one), but is this typical? Do Echinacea often have strange growth patterns? If so, is it generally a result of soil, light, water conditions or due to a genetic mutation?

Any thoughts?

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Comments (10)

anitamo
16 years ago
Google aster yellow disease and compare online photos to your plant. It's just a guess, though, it could be something else.

Here is a link that might be useful: aster yellow pics
vera_eastern_wa
16 years ago
I was guessing the same....

Vera
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lilium_guy56
16 years ago
Respectfully Anitamo is wrong. A few years ago I dug up some wild Black Eyed Susans. The 10 plants took well to transplanting and grew and bloomed the next summer. However, 1 plant had the weirdest looking flowers. The brown center grew around in a circle and met itself. The yellow petals were growing out both sides of it. It looked like a chocolate donut with yellow petals on both sides. Plus I could put my finger right thru the center hole. WEIRD for sure. Of course I thought I had something new. In my greenhouse I saved and planted the seeds and the result of those seeds was 50%/50%. Continuing to save the seeds from each new DONUT SUSANS I kept get a higher precentage of the weird ones until the 6th generation had 98% DONUT flowers. I started thinking about how rich I'd be. The 7th season all the seeds returned to normal. After replanting some of the seeds I still had from the 1st goofs they grew a few DONUT flowers but the weirdos disappeared.
Why tell you all that? YOU HAVE A GENETIC MUTANT. Many flowers are discovered by accident and are usually the result of some disease. Fringed Tulips, Parrot Tulips, Pagoda Monarda are the result of the originals getting a disease and mutating not from some genious of genetic engineering. I love those triple decker Monarda. I can picture your "STAR CONEFLOWERS". Your discription is fine. You have a bunch of small flowers around a center cone. I had a red Darwin tulip which grew a second flower straight up out of the center of the bloom below it. It did not repeat that.
I'd try to propagate the weirdo from seeds. See what happens. If you get true growing mutants I'm sure someone would fork over some $$$$. I have a neighbor who has spent 15 years crossing things like Alliums with Irises etc. he insists he'll get rich some day. SIGH!!!!!!!!
icotte
16 years ago
I'd love to see your solar system flower. You can upload it to the Gallerie.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/pepper/2002072150000611.html
rsmallen
16 years ago
FWIW here's an article and picture on yellows in echinacea, mondarda and caraway. http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex616
bloomingtoninbloom
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for all the input, everyone! I really appreciate being able to come here and take advantage of the knowledge of much more experienced gardeners!

Well, I looked up everything I could on yellow asters disease. It apparently is caused by a type of bacteria called phytoplasmas. Phytoplasmas are smaller than typical bacteria since they have shed their cell wall, relying on a membrane instead. This makes them easily transmitted between plants, primarily by phloem-feeding leafhoppers. There is no known treatment for the disease except for the destruction of the plant.

After reading all the nightmare stories people have posted about the spread of the disease, I decided to transplant my "solar system flowers" to an isolated bed where nothing else is planted. That way, if it turns out to be a genetic variation and not aster yellow disease, hopefully the plants will survive, in which case IÂll try to grow more from seed.

I know that phytoplasmas donÂt live in soil (indeed one of the difficulties scientists have in studying them is that they are hard to incubate in laboratories) and that the overwinter in perennial plants.

Given all this, do you think itÂs safe for me to put a new plant where the strange coneflower was or should I wait till next year?
icotte
16 years ago
Does your plant have yellow leaves? Here is another site with info on the disease. It shows a photo of a solar system flower. I think it's safe to re-plant there since they don't say not to.

Melba

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex578
bloomingtoninbloom
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the link, Melba. I had seen it earlier today and actually the pic is the most similar I could find to my flower. Mine, however, has fully-formed, albeit miniture, flowers on the end of the stems. As to yellowing, there is a slight yellow tinge to a few of the leaves.

I'm pretty much convinced that I have aster yellow disease but since the disease vector has been removed I think I should be safe planting something in the coneflower's place. I'd really love to try the "Sunset" coneflower variety but to be honest I'm a bit scared of Echinacea right now!
icotte
16 years ago
Do you have photo of it? It's easy to up-load a photo from your hard drive to this forum's Gallery forum. Just go to 'Perennials' forum. At the top you will see 'Switch to: Gallery'. Go there and start a thread as usual. After you hit 'preview message' button you will see 'Image file to upload (optional):' slot and a 'Browse' button. Click the 'Browse' button. Now you are navigating your hard drive. Go to where your photo is stored in your hard drive and find the photo name and select it (double click). Then click 'submit message' button. I just did a test message to make sure I knew how...lol. It's been awhile since I did one. Hope this helps.

Melba
eigdeh
16 years ago
I am not saying it is yellow asters as I did not see a photo of what you have. I can tell you that I definately had aster yellows last year on all my coneflowers by the end of the season. I should have ripped out the first one with suspicous, but not definate, signs earlier. One thing though is that my plants did not have yellow leaves, just the leafy seed pods.