Is there anything to blame for this strange bent/twisted heads on my oriental lilies?





Think it could be the excessive rain here this season? I can't recall for sure, but I think I also remember odd looking blooms, too.

This happened last season to a few of them, but this year it seems all are affected. It was very rainy last spring, too.

To address some of the other possibilities in the other thread:
--- Lawn weed killers would not affect lilies in that way. Lilies are monocots, like grass. Overspray of an herbicide like Round Up that goes after everything is possible, I suppose, but unlikely.
--- Since the insects that would cause this kind of damage would usually be sucking insects and not the type that eat parts of the plant/leaves, you would not see anything "missing". But I don't think it is insects, anyway.

My best guess is something environmental, since it all seemed to have happened at the same time. A cold snap a week or so ago? I suppose insects could do this, if they damaged one side of the stem, but not probable, in my opinion.

At any rate, your lilies will be fine in the long run. They may look a little wonky for the rest of this season, though.

Maybe the environmental effect is all the rain and cloud cover? It's been like three weeks straight, with only a spotty day or so of sunshine. I'm thinking they're not happy there's no sun to stretch towards. But my tiger lilies don't seem to mind...

Well, glad to hear they'll be okay, thank you, Rick.

Lilium are apparently somewhat resistant to glyphosate (RoundUp) but can be affected by some broad-leaved herbicides - this was just a process of elimination. If it's known that nothing was used in the neighbourhood then that can be ruled out. I had also asked about other pesticides because it isn't just herbicides that can cause problems. Since there was none of the above, then you might want to look at possibly a virus (especially since they were affected last year too) or some kind of pest. Not all pests that can cause distortion and bending are present on the plant all the time, or necessarily readily visible if they are, so you may not necessarily see anything when you look. The reason I thought of pesticides, other than that it is always considered with this type of symptom, is that some leaves on the adjacent plant are also distorted. That could also apply to a pest common to both, or be two different things of course.

I don't think it is foliar nematodes, there doesn't seem to be enough browning and the stems are also affected, but just to eliminate that possibility here's an article with a picture:

http://pnwhandbooks.org/plantd...

I did notice that there is what looks like browning on a stem or two. Is that a camera effect or is there really?

Also what are the black specks on the leaves? Just trying to eliminate pests (so figure out whether that could be droppings). I thought I could see something that looked like a bug on one or two of the pictures but it's not clear and may just be a shadow or something.

None of this is intended to alarm you but when faced with an unfamiliar plant problem one needs to go through a process of elimination to see what one is left with. I'd be surprised if wet cloudy weather would do this, especially bending to one side and distortion. Cold maybe, or hail even.

The black specks are bloodmeal to keep the deer off.

The stems aren't browning, but some of the leaves at the top seem to have browned slightly as they twisted.

It has been cool, with nights down in the forties for the past month, but not freezing.

Maybe something was used in the neighborhood and blew it this way but with all the rain I really doubt it. My asiatics are among them, and I've never noticed this effect on them. They're naturally shorter though.

It's just odd because this is the second time this has happened, and only to the oriental lilies (Salmon Star).

By adjacent, do you mean the lilies adjacent in the picture? I haven't seen distorted leaves on any of the other plants in the bed.

By adjacent I meant the smaller plants to the left in the top picture. Some of the shoots over-hanging the pathway appear to have puckered top leaves.

In this study below, the Oriental lily tested with herbicides was more sensitive than the Easter lily and Asiatic. Whether that difference happens with these types in general I have no idea but you can get different reactions based on variations in exposure to drift, and varying sensitivities between plants.

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

I didn't realize the puckered leaves were abnormal. It's soapwort. Looking at a few pics of new growth on the web, it seems the puckering is common to a certain extent...

If it's normal for the plant (didn't know what plant it was) it's not a clue, then. There were two or three shoots at the back of the picture by the path that looked curled at the leaf edges as well as puckered, that was what I was primarily looking at.

Oh, sorry--that's a bad angle. Those are just turned away because I'd dug some up recently and they were kind of bending over.

lovesblooms said:Is there anything to blame for this strange bent/twisted heads on my oriental lilies?

I'd be interested in seeing what these plants look like now, about a month later after the fact. It appears that there was a lot of top soft tissue growth during the extended cool weather period in conjunction with an over abundance of moisture. When a plant and bulb is saturated at it's maximum holding capacity for water, the uptake or absorption of certain minerals needed to build a strong stem are severely diminished ( think minerals like calcium is to strong bones in people ). When the weight of the top becomes too heavy for the soft skeletal framework to support the stem, it bends over. Quite often and if not too severe, the situation is self correcting, as soon as there's ample sunshine, warmer temperatures and moisture levels decline. The stem may harden back up with a bend in the middle but this problem will have no affect on next years performance.

Note: I see something similar on Div. VI, Trumpets and Aurelians quite often with newly budded stems=fast growth on warm nights. After one 80'F night a few days ago, I got up to about 12 or 15 like shown in the pictures below. All but a couple self corrected by the next day. Those in the pictures did not.

Thanks for asking for the update, Lorn. They have in fact done exactly as you observed with your lilies. Now they all look perfectly fine, and have budded well. Glad it really was just the extra rain.

Good news! Thanks for reporting back.