Re: pre-emergent herbicides cause hosta sports?

At 03:26 PM 06/05/2002, you wrote:

I hear there's some suspicion that pre-emergent herbicides such as Snapshot
are suspected of causing sports in Hostas.  Has anyone noticed this kind of
effect from Snapshot or Preen or other pre-emerge herbicide?  Thanks,
Margaret L

Hi Marg, I've used pre-emergent herbicides, many years ago and saw no effect on any of the crops which were being sprayed, one of which, was small hosta seedlings.  I forget what chemical it was I was using, but it was neiher of the two you mentioned.

IMHO, I don't believe there is a known chemical available to induce sporting/mutation in plants, else I'd have heard about, I think (since I'm receiving over 100 emails per day from various flower groups?).  There is a growth hormone called BAP-10, which forces new eye-shoots to appear rather quickly on hostas, that is to say, a single stemed hosta plant for example, sprayed with same: would clump up into multi-shoots rather quickly.  There have been some reports however (by Mary Chastain and myself) that there is down side (negative factor?) with use of BAP-10.  We noticed, that the new off-shoot plants are rather dwarfed (plant goes back to the immature juvenile stage?); and when spraying is done in late summer, many plants were lost totally by some kind of winter kill; and via, no emergence in the next springtime's repeat growth cycle?

Bill Nash Guelph Ontario Canada Zone 4 <raffi@sympatico.ca>

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flower_seedling_lovers/ 


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