Hi Elaine! Thanks so much for the welcome!
I will have to download the pictures tomorrow from the office, I don't have the speed required here in Jungle Cottage, takes too long then stalls.
The office has broadband so it's a whizz.
Yep I think so do we have all the diseases known to mankind, however.......my Cordylines are lovely and clean I don't even have brown tips. The interesting thing though on the other side of the water, a short ferry ride away there is a large clump of the big wild green Cordyline fruticosa (love the name, very fruity) and it always looks terrible. I took a drive for a closer inspection thinking I could take a few cuttings but no, definitely diseased right up the wazoo. Never dead but the leaves always look terrible, brown streaked, yellow spotty with brown patches and the not terribly old leaves prematurely yellow. Also what looks to me a lot like rust, bright red spots with yellow haloes, on the leaf margins too. Its been there for the longest time, surviving even spreading but not nice. Even more interesting than this is not too far from where I live is an old abandoned house now covered in strangler figs and dense bush and there is a clump of the same Cordyline. It's lovely fresh dark green, shiny and not a mark. I never wanted to go in there as it has a reputation for some pretty large snakes, but once I tried and was attacked by swarms, literally swarms of Aedes aegypti, the mosquitoes that spread dengue. Think there is some kind of well in the middle of the house because the mosquitoes just kept coming at me from the centre.
There it is. On Hawaii it was only in 2010 that these diseases became an issue. "Ti" leaves without blemishes are used for ornamental purposes, the slightly blemished ones for food production. That was until the blemishes, spotting and brown streaking became so severe that these were no longer acceptable for food processing by the then market standards. There is control of the various diseases as a result but Im not terribly sure about the ornamental garden growers, quite possibly, though if they're only selling cuttings, blemished plants won't be an issue as the buyer couldn't possibly know.........
Elaine who did you order through because it sounds like yours were fine! It could be more prevalent on certain Islands. Im sure they have strict rules about plants moving around themselves. But it's not exactly something you want to ask is it? Are your plants diseased? I know they need a phyto to be transported to The Big Island so maybe irradiation cleans them up.....possibly even producing some interesting cultivars along the way ha ha ha.
Today I found a lovely old cultivar in a very very old Camellia park. It's one I very much treasure but thought lost to cultivation. Also never seen it on the internet not even on the International Cordyline society site. I had it myself but through this or that project in the garden (think it was a pond construction) actually managed to also lose it. It's what I call "big ginger". Lovely big, wide, long upright leaves slightly squarish at the end, possibly the biggest leaves I've ever seen on a Cordyline, quite thin leaves with nice ribbing, strong leaf stalks. Strong grower too with nice thick stems that shoot from the ground. The leaves are completely ginger back and front and when the sun shines through they are tremendous. The leaf stalks are a beautiful rosy rosy red. Well in my search everywhere I remember this plant growing they had completely vanished and no one seems to even remember it, so I stopped looking. Then today I was watching an informal football match on the green between Sri Lanka and Cambodian construction workers and in the distance in a neat lawn in the middle of a perfect circle of palms was a stand of old ginger radiating in the low light. It was at the back of the changing rooms so averting my eyes as startled naked bodies flashed I managed to gain access to the small park after the match was over. The park was mostly just full of ancient Camellias on little shady hillocks and the palm circle lawn in the middle like a sunken garden. One or two lovely old old Croton varieties too which I will most definitely go back for one of these days. Long story but managed to find a very obliging cleaning lady with secateurs and get a lovely entire long thick stem with top and cause mayhem in the changing rooms again as I needed an empty water bottle to put it in. Surprising how obliging naked men can be, never seen so many bottles appear
Definitely think Cambodia had the edge by quite a significant margin but then what do I know about football.
