Daylily Rust: My Limited Experience Of This In My Own Garden.
Daylily Arrived In Australia A Few Years Ago.
I've had a little daylily rust appearing now and
then in my garden over the last 18 months. Outbreaks of daylily rust in my garden have been very small,
and so far reasonably easy to control. Update
January 2012:
December was the wettest in 50 Years. Rust likes
moisture and humidity, so the rust came to my garden. Once the weather
returns to normal, the rust should disappear and the daylilies will once again
look healthy and beautiful.
Do keep in mind that many plants occasionally
develop rust/black-spot/powdery mildew, etcetera, and such problems don't
prevent most gardeners from wanting to grow those plants.
I intend to continue growing the beautiful daylily, but will compost any
cultivar that appears to be extra susceptible to rust. I can live
with the fact that daylilies will occasionally get orange spots on their
foliage, as I have learned to live with black-spot on the foliage of my roses.
If your daylilies develop rust you might elect to spray for rust to help control it; certainly spraying would
appear to be the way to go for many commercial daylily nurseries;
it's impractical for them to keep stripping affected outer leaves from plants.
You'll most likely want to develop your own methods of control...ask
other daylily growers what they're doing to control it, then make
your own decision as to how you want to attack to problem.
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Rust on Oxalis. Oxalis was
growing in same pot as a daylily which was also afflicted with rust
(it was daylily rust on the
daylily, even though it looked exactly like the rust
on the oxalis).
I don't grow Patrina. On the extremely* rare* occasion I'll see a tiny bit of clivia rust on my clivias (has been very easily controlled by stripping off the 3-4 affected outer leaves and disposing of them...problem is virtually non-existent there). I often see a bit of clivia rust on the clivias in nurseries, but the owners or managers never seem terribly bothered by it.
UPDATE (updated oxalis rust information May 27 2010): The news from those in the know is that most daylily growers with rust believe that oxalis rust is specific to oxalis, and hasn't "learned" to cross over to daylilies. I'm told by a person experienced in daylily rust behaviour that the oxalis rust and the daylily rust appear at the same time in my garden only because the CONDITIONS for plant rust exist at the time of the infections. Thank you everyone for you input. It's always possible that rust spores can mutate, but at the moment it's generally not considered a strong possibility.