beckygardener
Here is a percent to letter or number ranking
http://daylilybreeder.blogspot...

Larry - I saw that also when reading his article. But ... most daylilies are rust rated via a numbering system.

Brian Reeder wrote (and I quote from his article):

"Now, let’s look at the numerical percentages I equate with each letter. A+ is no rust spores or 0% spore coverage on either side of any leaves on the plant, while A is 1% to 25% spore coverage on the underside of any number of leaves on the plant. B is 25% to 50% rust spore coverage on the underside of any number of leaves on the plant, while C is 50% to 75% spore coverage on the undersides of the leaves on the plant. D is 75% to 100% coverage of the underside of the leaves by rust spores."

This would equate to the 1-5 rust ratings. If I judged my plants by Brian's ratings, most of mine would be an A+ through a C (Or a 1 through 3). Though I like that idea, I don't know how accurate his rating is via rust percentage.

Are his ratings accurate????

I love the pretty faces, but also judge my plants on overall foliage appearance. If many of mine look pretty bad at even just the tips, I feel that takes away from the overall appearance. Maybe I am expecting too much, but I like a healthy-looking plant to grace my garden. Especially the parts that are easily seen. The bloom is secondary, IMHO, since the majority of my daylilies rarely re-bloom. Therefore, it is the foliage that shows a more prominent place in my garden and could make a nice foliage edging to border my garden beds. If they bloomed for much longer, then the flowers would take priority.

I have thought of another way to deal with this dilemma ... I have considered growing other plants in front or around the daylilies to try to hide any rusty foliage. But I need a relatively short plant species that has shallow and small roots so as not to compete for nutrients and water from the daylilies. This plant species would also have to be drought tolerant to some degree since my gardens get very hot and dry in summer here in central Florida despite my regular watering.

Sue - What you said makes perfect sense to me. But what I am seeing in my garden is quite the opposite. Which is why I have asked this question several times. I don't quite understand what is going on in my yard.

My front yard is sunny and dry. Rust loves that area. I have three partially shady beds that have MUCH nicer foliage. Go figure!

Maybe what I am seeing in the front bed is damage from the heat and not all from rust. (Though I DO see rust on those leaves.) Lots of foliage is ugly in the front yard, while the shade areas are looking much nicer. Maybe the heat is causing the plants to go summer dormant which is why the foliage looks so bad as well? Much of what I see appears to be rust damage though.

And I will say that I had the shady area plants in a full sun area originally. The foliage looked pretty awful, but since I moved them, they look so much nicer. Could it be the heat and full sun taking a toll on them?

Also, this is a photo of the foliage from seedlings that are 4 months old. As you can see, there is one leaf in there that is almost covered in rust! I suspect the rust will cover the entire leaf (and plant) before long. They have only been outside a little over a week. No rust was seen on this cross until they went outside. They were started and grown inside in a south window. I would have to say that this cross is a rust magnet! Would this current photo be rated as a 3, 4, or 5?

Would this current photo be rated as a 3, 4, or 5?

To get an idea how to rate that leaf, you could try taking another photo every few days until the leaf dies. Then you could compare the photos. The one with the rust covering the most would be a 5. That presumably would be the most that rust would cover of any daylily leaf.
If 1 is for no rust then the maximum amount of rust covering the leaf would be rated 5, 75% of that maximum would be a 4, 50% of that maximum would be a 3, 25% of that maximum would be a 2 and no rust would be a 1.

It did occur to me too that maybe the problem in the sun might be related to direct damage from sun and dryness, i.e. not all rust damage. I was a little surprised that you don't get rebloom there - here where rebloom is not the norm the foliage can get pretty awful looking after flowering and has nothing to do with rust.

Are there actually pustules on that pictured leaf? I can't see any on my monitor, I just see elongated lesions - also it is kind of quick for just one leaf on a plant to be covered like that in a little over a week. It usually takes 9 days or more for a spore that lands on a leaf to infect and then produce visible spores itself, and that's in ideal conditions for the rust. The shape of the lesions with rust can vary but something about that one looks different and the timing doesn't seem right.

beckygardener,
Look at the 6th paragraph from the bottom, it "equates" the numbering systems, both 5 and 10, to the lettering system. His point being that once you understand how to judge any of the systems you will pretty well be able to equate that rating system to any of the others.

To get any kind of accurate rust rating all plant conditions have to be exactly the same
as has been done in some university studies previously:
same soil, mineralization, same plant age, environment, fertilization, etc.

And rust ratings would have to be done at the same time.

I do my own "home gardener 1-5 rust ratings" but allow that there are big differences
between my 3 growing areas.

It would be nice if there were an official rust rating service where potential introductions could be sent for rust rating.

beckygardener said:


Also, this is a photo of the foliage from seedlings that are 4 months old. As you can see, there is one leaf in there that is almost covered in rust! I suspect the rust will cover the entire leaf (and plant) before long. They have only been outside a little over a week. No rust was seen on this cross until they went outside. They were started and grown inside in a south window. I would have to say that this cross is a rust magnet! Would this current photo be rated as a 3, 4, or 5?

Maybe too soon to judge the little guys.
Since they have just been moved, they are highly susceptible.
Treat them for rust and then see what they do.

If all leaves get covered like in the pic, I'd say "5".
But even a #1 plant will get rust if rubbing against a rusty one,
so getting an accurate reading on the other seedlings may be difficult if they are close together.

But if that rusty seedling comes back for another round of rust after treatment,
the cure might be to just throw it away.

Rust rating is sure complicated. I agree with everything here.

I won't treat any of my daylilies for rust though. I garden organically, so as Pat suggested ... if some of them remain rust buckets next year, they will be culled. I do like to keep at least a couple rust buckets in each garden bed for exposure to the other daylilies. In all honesty, so far, I haven't seen too many "5" ratings so far among my daylilies. Lots of 3 ratings. But also a surprising number of "1" and "2" ratings. I hope they continue to show resistance next year. And I am crossing the "1" and "2" rating plants with all the others. Unfortunately, most of my "1" and "2" are spider daylilies. I do have quite a few still yet to bloom, so who knows what the new ones will look like. I am seeing resistance on many plant's foliage so far, too.

Sue - I don't know what else those lesions on the baby leaves might be? What else could make those marks. I ran a tissue along the bottom of the leaves and no rust. So you are probably correct that it isn't rust. What else it could be, I don't know. It is on several of the leaves of that seedling and it's siblings in the same cup.

beckygardener said:
Sue - I don't know what else those lesions on the baby leaves might be? What else could make those marks. I ran a tissue along the bottom of the leaves and no rust. So you are probably correct that it isn't rust. What else it could be, I don't know. It is on several of the leaves of that seedling and it's siblings in the same cup.

Is it only one ones in the same cup and are they the same cross? Do you remember if there was any sign of it on them before they were planted? If you could take off an affected leaf, set it on a piece of white paper to stop the camera focusing on the background, and take a close-up pic of both sides of the leaf it may help. I'm wondering if it is something physiological, maybe nutritional. Do you know who the parents are?

Sue - It's been raining quite a bit here lately, so getting a photo is not possible at this time. Maybe later. Yes, it is all the same cross in one cup that has the damage showing on it's leaves. Perhaps it is something as simple as a sunburn. Though all the new seedlings are expose and none of them have any issues visible on their leaves. I looked closer and it seems to be the leaves on just one seedling in the cup. I thought it was several of them, but in fact it is only one plant.

I don't think it's sunburn per se, and it would be unusually quick for a disease. There are a couple of (old) daylilies that are known to have foliage issues of undetermined cause although I think one might have been related to light intensity - I think I have a picture of one of them somewhere and will verify the light connection. Whenever you get a chance to do the pictures we'll see if we can figure it out. It'll be interesting to see if the new middle leaves that subsequently emerge are clean or not.

I sometimes get something that looks like that on my daylily leaves and it isn't rust. Not sure what it is, maybe some sort of mineral deficiency.

I was searching for photos of daylily leaf streak, rust, leaf miner damage, mite damage, things that might cause the leaves to look bad, even the natural aging process and was disappointed in what I found. Many of the sites I pulled up were no longer available, or they had dropped the photos from the site. I did find this site, and I liked that it did give several photos of different things that affect daylily leaves, but the rust photo was missing and could not enlarge the other photos to get a closer view. So I was thinking this fits right in with the rust and the mystery of the leaf disease on Becky's plants. I think it would be nice if we here at ATP could post pictures of our bad looking leaves and the name of the disease, if known, that caused it.
I especially would love to see, from people more knowledgeable than me, photos of the normal browning and aging of daylily leaves. I would love for us to be able to post photos and have qualified people determine the causes of the problems shown in the photos, I think it could be turned into a great reference site, if we can obtain correct information. So I am going to start a new thread called Photo examples of Hemerocallis leaves. I hope people won't mind adding photos of their worst looking plants for a change instead of their best.

Seedfork said:I was searching for photos of daylily leaf streak, rust, leaf miner damage, mite damage, things that might cause the leaves to look bad, even the natural aging process and was disappointed in what I found. Many of

The AHS Daylily Dictionary has pictures of all the above except mite damage, see:

Pests (scroll down for the list of pests and links to their pages: http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

Diseases:
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

See also interveinal chlorosis, which is fairly common in daylilies:
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

It's difficult to do a comprehensive presentation of what you're looking for because it's not always possible to identify a problem based on a picture, it may need a lab analysis and even then be inconclusive. Some problems can look very much alike. I have some pictures of mite damage (I posted one earlier in another thread, forget which one) and thrips damage and maybe a few other things that I can post on your thread when I get a moment. Sometimes with visual problems one also needs a history and to see the whole plant, though, to be able to take a shot at what the problem is.

I think there might be some problems that would need a lab analysis but really I don't know of any. But, even if we don't cover every single problem a daylily could have, I still think it would be good to have most of the common problems covered with a lot more examples that are available on the AHS sight. Plus we could have all the other information you mentioned added, history of the plant, photo of the entire plant, and shots of the problem. I hope people will contribute their ideas and photos, maybe we can even lure some plant experts to take a look at the info presented and give some opinions.