Those trees are potential bonsai. They're not supposed to be representative of advanced trees; rather, they are at the beginning of their life as bonsai with a lot of work ahead of them before they can become show stoppers. Nature doesn't play the primary role in the shaping of all bonsai. Some trees, like these, depend significantly on the vision and skill of the tree's owner, as opposed to those whose spirit is largely bestowed by mother nature. Al

I found about twenty roses with RRD at a local box store about six weeks after their grand opening. I went to the garden manager and had him get the store manager. (It was a Friday afternoon, too late to contact the state inspectors). I explained the situation. The store manager called for the clean up crew and I watched as all the sick roses were carried out to the dumpster. The store had RRD sick multiflora on fencelines within three tenths of a mile of the front of the store and blooming roses had been set out for the grand opening...all in front of the garden center. On Monday I called the state inspectors, and they checked out the greenhouses where the roses had been potted and grown out and the roses remaining there were clean. This lead to RRD being linked on the Southeastern Ag Inspectors website, where they go for up to date info (the daylily rust links there are also good.) You have two parts of officialdom you can contact if the store owner doesn't do the right thing: Your county extension agent ....mostly to warn them, they have no power.' Your inspector who works for both the state and federal governments who inspects all nurseries (sellers and propagators) and who is responsible for healthy correctly named plants being sold. Some need to be brought up to speed but most will listen and learn. And then there are the two separate stories from Nashville and Memphis where probably RRD was seen in nurseries and when the people got enough info to go back and talk to them, both were told that "rosarians" told them to just remove the ugly growth and everything would be fine. And the roses did sell before the worried folks got there. If you have trouble finding your local state ag inspector, the nurseries should have a certificate from them (and you may be able to get a name that way.) (And this is why I dislike e-commerce from uninspected growers.)

I love the red rings too! They are aposematic coloring, along with the shiny black setae. The Arctiidae are well studied (some of them) for their sequestration of secondary chemicals (allelochemicals) from plants. They sequester pyrolizidine alkaloids, many of which come from the senecio family. They sequester other chemicals as well, such as iridoid glycosides from plantain. The same chemicals as buckeye cats. Some of the Arctiidae are extremely toxic or distasteful. That is why so many of the moths are colorful, such as the virgin tiger moth, the great tiger moth, and even the leopard moth, which in addition to the white and black spots has a lovely blue and red abdomen. Arctiidae also are some of the most polyphagous cats around, with some eating over 100 different species of plants. They also use pyrolizidine alkaloids for courtship and have developed complicated coremata or hairpencils for this. Interestingly enough, milkweed butterflies also use pyralizodine alkaloids as well for both defense and courship. They get them from flowers as adults, which is why monarchs love joy-pye weed and other eupatoriums. I could go on about that but I have written enough of a tome. I love the relationships Leps have with plants. Right now my giant leopards are loving dandelions, which seems to be a favorite of Arctiidae, and easy to supply. I remember Larry saying he fed his Taraxacum officinale, and I had to look it up! Typical Larry, lol! I remember raising an Isabella Tiger moth when I was six years old (to be fair, it was ready to pupate and all I did was provide a container to pupate in). I was disappointed that such a dull moth came from such a pretty caterpillar! Thus it was 30 plus years before I tried that again :)! Dan, I just put in a request to my local library for an inter-library loan. I think this book came from Virginia Tech. These scientific tomes are too expensive to buy. The next one I want is about checkerspots and is like $100. I like butterflies but that is too much to spend on a book! I will try putting the caterpillars in the fridge. Yikes, my fridge is quickly filling up with butterflies, cats, and pipevine (I still have some very small caterpillars). Cheers, Elisabeth

404912, you might be thinking co-dominant genes, where T is green and T' is white, so TT' would make a plant that shows both white and green (which is what this person describes when they say striated white and green leaves). Tt would indicate that green is dominant (T) and white (t) is recessive and a Tt would still produce a green plant with only tt giving you a white plant, no combination would give you a multicolored plant. This assumption of genetics does not account for things like crossing over and random mutations, only "normal" alleles. Since this would be a case of co-dominance, a simple punnets square of TT'xTT' OR TTxTT' shows us that each corn seed has a 50% chance of showing this "variegated" trait I think it's safe to say that is most likely a random mutation or else it would be FAR more common. This is also way over simplified, and assumes that leaf color, the amount of chloroplasts, anthocyanins and carotinoids, are all controlled by a single gene and not multiple genes and also only accounts for a monohybrid cross. I really only know enough about genetics to be dangerous, and I admit I know nothing at all about corn genetics in particular, so like I said, very over simplified.