Viewing post #920239 by admmad

beckygardener said:Maurice - So you and Sue are both saying that Spring Sickness did not kill any of your plants? Each one finally did recover after much time and your daylilies actually increased and bloomed exhibiting no ill effects?

I am saying that my plants that had spring sickness (ss) did recover given enough time. They were clumps to begin with so I cannot say what might happen if a single fan plant or a plant with only a few fans had spring sickness. The plants that suffer from spring sickness here do exhibit ill effects for quite some time including for more than one growing season. The plants that suffer from spring sickness here may not bloom in the year that they have ss even if they had bloomed in the previous year. Even if they do manage to bloom in the same year that they had ss their flowering does show very strong ill effects with far fewer scapes, shorter scapes and fewer buds on each scape. Spring sickness often seems to kill the growing points of fans. When that happens the original fan is replaced by one or more fans from axillary buds. Here, in general, when a clump suffers from ss, after the clump recovers there are more but considerably smaller fans in the clump. I have not taken measurements but imagine something like the following: originally a fan is one inch wide, after suffering ss that fan is basically gone (a couple of its leaves may linger) but after its crown recovers, in its place are two fans each less than a quarter inch wide (sometimes very much less). The one inch fan would have bloomed this year; the smaller fans might not bloom for two more years. It is possible that the one inch fan dies and is not replaced by any smaller fans ( I have never tracked the outcome of ss on each individual fan in a clump). I suspect that some fans do die and are not replaced.