Update on Arisaema Rust

From: mossytrail at hctc.com (mossytrail) on 2008.06.25 at 01:28:10(17950) Some of you may remember several weeks ago I wrote inquiring about orange rust on Arisaema. The reply I got off-list was that the usual way to deal with this is to discard affected plants. +More Here is the updated situation. Because I am at a temporary address, I kept the plant in its pot. With the changeable weather this spring, I kept the plant in an east-facing sunroom, where I figured the temperatures would be slightly more even, and the direct sun in the morning would warm the sunroom. In this environment, I have found that the plant's leaves show none of the distortion usually caused by the rust (which I observe in the wild-growing plants in the woods). I cut off the inflorescence after it faded, so the plant could conserve energy by not producing fruit. The rust spots seem to have dried to a whitish color, and most could be easily rubbed off with a thumb. In the woods, I observe that the rust is very patchy: in a cluster of three or four closely-spaced plants, likely divisions, there will be at most one plant with the rust, the others unaffected. I have not seen the rust on its other host, the may-apple, which is even more abundant than Arisaema. I do not yet know whether the sunroom plant's response is significant, but I intend to continue the experiment. Jason Hernandez Naturalist-at-Large

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