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NATIONAL FUCHSIA SOCIETY of New Zealand:


Articles reprinted from the "National Link" Magazine
1 Fuchsia Rust
By Jim Kane

2 My Mycorrhizae Experiments
By Marion Prestney & Marge Hill


3 The New Registrar for
Fuchsias in New Zealand
By
Peter O'Hara/Elaine Baldwin

4 Egmont Blue
By Ted Sweetman

  
 
1

FUCHSIA RUST

This hardy fungi will be with us again soon. It is appearing on roses already. It is a highly contagious disease which first appears as a reddish or black/brown discoloration on both sides of the leaves. Shortly afterwards, on the underside of the leaves, an orange type of eruption occurs (these are the spores of the disease) and it is then ready to spread.

The best treatment is prevention but this can be difficult, particularly with varieties that are prone to rust. Do not overcrowd your plants. Yes, when you put them on the bench they were miles apart. But you forgot you were really going to look after them this year and they grew larger than you anticipated.

Ensure good ventilation. This is most important as rust thrives in humidity (and so, too, do our fuchsias) Inspect your plants regularly, particularly during a spell of wet weather.
Pick up your plants regularly and inspect under the leaves as this is where it is most noticeable. If you find rust, pick off all infected leaves, burn them, and isolate the infected plant. Fuchsia rust is highly contagious so please do not sell or give away any plants that may have it. Even check new plants in the nursery. They have been known to sell plants with rust and other nasties.

Disinfect your hands before handling clean fuchsias. Also around the bench and any tools you may have used on them. Check the rest of your fuchsias daily to be sure no more are infected. If you find any treat the same way.

Isolate any new plants or cuttings you are given for a week or so to be sure you are not introducing it into your garden.

Suitable sprays are Baycor or Rose and garden fungicide. There are others available too so look in the nursery and see what is available. Baycor is one I know works very well. Fairly expensive but efficient. Preventive spraying works well. Monthly should be often enough but if it appears increase the spraying rotation.

Each gardener has their favorite cure for each disease or pest and I would not say that any of them are no good. If weather conditions are ideal then most cures will work. If the weather is against you then the most guaranteed remedies are just mediocre. Whatever you use follow the directions completely. Do not add some extra for good luck. I saw a lawn sprayed with Versatil after my recommendation. One nice dead lawn. When I asked what went wrong he had no idea. He had followed my instructions. Until he admitted that he thought 5 mils was not enough per litre so gave it more for good measure. The recommendations on the bottles are made after widespread testing and have been proved to be efficient. DO NOT ADD EXTRA.
Jim Kane
 
2

My *Mycorrhizae Experiments


I heard Roger Watkins mention mycorrhizae at a gardening seminar some 10 years ago where he touched on the simbiotic relationship with plants and this fungi. Because I have a rather large garden, to look after, (and far too many fuchsias!) my focus is on garden plants, raising plants for garden rather than enjoying pots and baskets. Having pergolas and pillars built for fuchsias I love to grow them very tall and experiment with this aspect and now have them hanging down on a walkway, at a height of over 8 feet.

Because of this I have tried to take cuttings the easy way of popping them below the parent plant, and found that some fuchsias, e.g. Enid Carter, Genii, Celia Smedley, to mention but a few, "take" so very easily, yet some of my lovelies will not take at all.

During Roger Watkins' talk, he said that because of the peculiar aspect of the fungi, there could be an early antipathy for cuttings to take but if they do so, they will be very strong. This is exactly as I have found - some of the best plants I have, were grown this way yet I did not know whether this was chance, imagination, or luck. So the theory is a fascinating one and I find I get more of the difficult takers doing better with more persistence and care.

Since that last meeting I have taken soil from plants doing really welt and added it to the more puny looking ones and will hope for great results. A most interesting discovery which no doubt many of our great fuchsia gardeners know all about.
Marion Prestney

More on the Mycorrhizae Matter

In 1947 husband Ray and I went to North Auckland, he having been appointed to a sole- charge school just south of Waipoua Forest, where there was a large nursery growing pines for seaward shelter and also Kauri from seed. Arch Moore, "the boss man" at HG took the little school (mostly forestry kids) under his wing and suggested the school might like to grow a patch of Kauris from seed as a project.

Ray, a keen plantsman himself, was keen so Arch supplied the seed, gave us some tips - (for example the little seedlings need covering for a couple of years with scrim to reproduce filtered light) and also brought a dollop of soil from beneath mature forest kauris, to add to the growing medium, saying it would contain mycorrhiza, essential for the development of the young plants.

That was the first time I heard the word mycorrhizae and had not again, until Roger Watkins so interesting talk last month- nearly 60 years later. Naturally, I found his work especially interesting and apparently the research has been ongoing and much more understood.
Incidentally the seed germinated well and the plants were thriving - about knee high when we left in 1950.
Marge Hill

*Mycorrhiza (pl. Mycorrhizae) A fungal mycellum investing or penetrating the underground parts of a higher plant and supplying it with material from humus rather than root hairs
 
3

The New Registrar for Fuchsias in New Zealand


In my column in the May 2005 issue of the National Link, I reported that the National Fuchsia Society had been asked to pick up the work of the late Jock Penney in maintaining the register of fuchsia species and cultivars grown in New Zealand. I asked, more in hope than in expectation, if there was someone out there in Fuchsialand who might take on this task, was not expecting a response and figured that it was going to take shoulder tapping and arm twisting to find somebody.
To my surprise and delight there is somebody! Elaine Baldwin has agreed to tackle this task Elaine is our Independents' delegate, the editor for the Franklin Fuchsia Group and editor for the New Zealand Fuchsia Society. You would have thought that she had enough to do. But she is excited by the job ahead and rather chuffed to be following in Jock's footsteps.

Elaine and I travelled to Blenheim to meet Jock's daughter, Jenny Pierson and his son John. Elaine was given a CD with the register's database on it and material that Jock had collected but not loaded. Jenny and John were delighted to see that Jock's work would be carried on because they knew how much time and effort he devoted to maintaining the register as well as compiling the material for the two volumes of The World Book of Fuchsias. They have promised to help in whatever way they can.
My thanks go to Allan (Manny) Price for setting up this meeting for us, chauffeuring us around and for arranging a very pleasant lunch with some members of the Marlborough Society in his home. In Elaine's words, "What a great day?"

The New Zealand Fuchsia Register is our bible. It will belong to the National Fuchsia Society and we will hold the copyright so it is up to us to keep it up to date. As Registrar, Elaine will arrange the input to the database but she will depend on NFSNZ members to provide at least some of the information she will need or point her in the right direction. Look for her article on what she needs.Developing the register was Jock's all-consuming passion especially in his later years and with John's computer expertise, the platform is well established. Because it is a Microsoft Access database it is capable of being queried in a variety of ways
We may have to think about whether there need to be some rules about what is included in the Register. There are some clear rules about preparing a new cultivar for registration but not all the cultivars in the current Register are registered. Registration does not guarantee that all registered cultivars are desirable prompting comments like those of the late Leo Boulfemier for one of the entries in his book 'one of 22 irresponsible registrations by the raiser for 1993'.
We will also need to think about how we provide updates on the Register in the future. It has been suggested that future importations will be severely restricted by importation regulations so we will not see new importation records.
Peter O'Hara

From the New Registrar (Edited from the November 2005 Link)
In August 2005 I had the privilege of travelling to Blenheim to meet the Penney family, to receive the information to carry on the Register. We met John Penney and Jenny Pierson, Jocks son and daughter. They were so helpful and through the miracles of modern technology, I came home with not bags / boxes cartons of information, but a CD that just slips into the computer and it is all there. Mind boggling.
It has made me realise how IMPORTANT it is to name plants and labels correctly. When it comes to the register, even a space or a hyphen or uppercase or lower case letters in the wrong order have to be corrected. So it is painstaking BUT necessary. Everyone knows how mistakes can be perpetuated, so please take extra care when naming your cuttings, that they are actually correct.
And PLEASE, PLEASE. PLEASE, if you don't know its proper name don't GIVE it one like.. Betty's Favourite, because that is where you acquired it from. Generation after generation of plants will carry on that name. Remember that someone has taken the time and years of effort to hybridise the plant, and has the naming rights. If it was your creation, how would you feel?
Elaine Baldwin

(Elaine Baldwin's address is on the home page).
Enquiries and comments may be sent to fuchsiasnospam@orcon.net.nz
 
4

N.Z. PLANT PROFILE
"Egmont Blue"
A single flower with pale pink tube and darker veining. Horizontal sepals are ivory white on upper, white edged light violet underneath, with recurved tips. Corolla opens campanula-violet splashed pink and white at base, maturing to cyclamen purple 3/4 flared medium sized flowers. Growth medium, upright and bushy. It makes a good bush or standard. Egmont Blue was raised by Doug Proffitt, New Plymouth The parentage is unknown.
"Egmont Blue" is one of three named for Mt Egmont in Taranaki The others are "Egmont Trail" a sport of "Oregon Trail" and "Egmont Gold", a double with very light foliage
Doug Proffitt is a retired Taranaki farmer who, through his love of fuchsias, set up a fuchsia nursery and show garden with his wife Rita when he retired to New Plymouth city. He raised several good fuchsias and worked with the late Robert Sharpe in registering all of Sharpes cultivars.. In later years the nursery was passed to the family. but the collection is now at Living Lights nursery at Omata, Taranaki
With its lovely colour combination, 'Egmont Blue is very worthwhile adding to your collection
Ted Sweetman