For those who wish to keep and eye out for the leaf spot disease on Bilberry, here are a couple of photos taken in July 2010, of the patch that tested positive for Phytophthora. These were some of the photos I sent to Kevin Izzard, leading him to request a site visit, to collect material for testing.
What these photos don't really show is the spotting on the stems, but just imagine spots similar to those on the leaf.
The spots don't really show themselves until the leaves have matured a little, so it is probably too soon to look for leaf spots, but the spots on the stems will be there, of course.
Sometimes, infected plants produce new growth which turns completely red, but Bilberry sometimes does this for other, unknown reasons.
Looking again at these photos, it strikes me that this seems to be a relatively mild dose of spotting.
Mark - this is very interesting (and worrying) in the context of Butterfly Conservation's work on Silurian Moth. I've been looking at habitat in the Black Mountains over the last couple of years and seen large areas of Bilberry with these symptoms - I'll contact you off group with more information.
ReplyDeleteGeorge