Re: CULT: pineapple- confused

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Driving through the countryside, you will often see trees and shrubs with small sections of twigs densely clustered together, resulting in a mass of shoots that resemble a broom. The actual cause is not always clearly understood, but can be due to various microorganisms or insects.

Witches broom on Jack pine is commonly caused by Dwarf Mistletoe – a tiny flowering, almost inconspicuous parasitic plant. The mistletoe produces a tiny seed that is propelled great distances onto the growth of surrounding pine trees. There, the seed germinates, infects the new tree and begins the cycle again.

In the nursery trade, the densely compact growth habit is often considered attractive. So desirable is this appearance that several types of plants infected with witches broom have been selected, propagated and released as ornamental cultivars. Many “dwarf” cultivars are examples of witches broom. Below Willow Witches Broom

On Apr 9, 2008, at 2:48 PM, s*@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 4/9/2008 2:49:19 PM Mountain Daylight Time, flatnflashy@yahoo.com writes:

--- In iris-photos@yahoogroups.com, Jan Lauritzen 
<janicelauritzen@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Christian,

I'm confused. To my eye my picture, and iris, do not look anything 
like the "proliferation". For one thing mine is still very much in 
the dirt- er clay. I'll buy the asexual part... 

This is one branch of the rhizome clump which ends in the fan whose 
base is visible in the second shot. This part of the rhizome 
has "normal" increases off to the sides, you can see them at the 
bottom of the second picture.

Maybe I'm just operating under a faulty understanding of how iris 
rhizomes grow. I'm accepting as normal that the rhizome makes new 
leaves until it reaches bloom size, blooms, and dies. Hopefully, the 
rhizome pauses long enough to create "daughter" rhizomes, which are 
usually lateral of the "mother" rhizome. Operating in that 
perspective, the appearance of several fans on top of a 
single "mother" rhizome, as appears to be the case with this plant, 
is abberant.

I don't know that this applies in your case, but I have seen daughter rhizomes growing on top of a mother rhizome when the mother's growing point had been damaged so that it couldn't bloom, or when growing conditions were such that there was little room for normal lateral increase.  Ancestry is also a factor, as some species tend to bunch while others sprawl.

 

Sharon McAllister

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