I thought I'd post this here, since it's in reference to the same plants as my previous posts.
Only one of the two stems from the double-nosed 'Sancerre' flowered (and it wasn't 'Sancerre'). The other stem progressively lost its leaves no matter what I tried and eventually died. Two days ago I pulled it out and found three baby stem bulblets on it:
I subsequently cut off the stem above and below the bulblets and replanted it in the same pot. I thought nothing of it until this evening when I noticed colour blotching on the last 'Corsica' imposter (which I think opened yesterday). My first thought was that it was a virus and since both imposters came from the same supplier, perhaps the failed 'Sancerre' imposter was trying to outrun.
However, once I thought about it a bit, I realised all the blotching was on the sepals and there seemed to be insect damage on the top sepal, as though something had gotten into the bud (first and most likely suspect - thrips, as they have been on my roses and I have seen a few on one of the other 'Corsica' imposter blooms). There were also no signs of mottling on the leaves (that was on the 'Sancerre' imposter earlier in the season).
So now I have two questions:
1) Is this is consistent with insect damage?
2) Is it possible to transfer virus through pollen? I took some pollen from the 'Sancerre' imposter and crossed it with 'Navarra' as an experiment, but now I'm wondering if that was a bad idea.
