One I had last year was an OT, but I don't recall the others. This year's purple finally succumbed today with a very weak stem at the base and leaves nearly black. Saddest part of all was that it was Buggy's Awesome.

That's a shame that it had to be an Awesome. Is that the only Awesome you have? Just have to keep your fingers crossed for next year and really hope for the best on this one because our experience with purple leaf survival is not good. Nobody will like hearing this; none of us want to loose another Awesome, regardless who's it is!

I saw what I think is purple leaf just starting on a Stargazer Tuesday. I'll check again this morning. Because, if it is, I want to take a good look at those scales and see what the possibility of scaling might be. I would remove 6 or 8 scales and replant the bulb for further watching and study (since I presume the bulb has been forced dormant by some influence). Depending on what I see here, you might be able to clone your Awesome bulb, hopefully this coming Fall.

Roosterlorn said:Nobody will like hearing this; none of us want to loose another Awesome, regardless who's it is!

Is Awesome a strain as well as a cv?

Yep--purple leaf. with a Stargarzer. Appears to be one of a double nose. I plan to let purple leaf do its job (till the leaves fall) then dig and study. It is in the loosely maintained orphan plant-staging garden.

I dug up one of my purple leaved trumpets (4n) yesterday and what I found was a firm bulb other than the outer ring of scales was rotting away. I pulled all that stuff off; the basal plate looked okay.

I have one other purple leaved trumpet stalk, one of my four Pink Flairs. These four are growing very close but just the one stem is affected. This stalk didn't even try to put out buds as far as I can tell. Never saw a bud on it. The other three PFs are OK.

Connie, make sure you mark its location well (red plastic spoon works good) since you've got four so close together. On the 4n, was that a juicy kind of rot, or dry kind of rot from scale aging?

Probably a dry kind of rot. It was wet because water doesn't drain well there so a little gooey.

I forgot to ask, had it developed enough stem roots, in your opinion? Those anchor roots look dead (?). I can see where it has shed many aged scales--or is that because you removed them? The one purple leaf I had last year was an After Eight, also from this staging garden. I did not spray this ground with copper base fungicide last year nor this year. This is the only garden thats had purple leaf as well. Maybe spraying with copper base or treating the soil with Captan might help prevent it.