Nothing changes!

Writing in The magazine of Horticulture, Botany and all useful discoveries in Rural Affairs in the USA in 1861, the editor, C.M. Hovey, writing about Cannas stated that "We have in our last volume alluded to the importance of ornamental-leaved plants for the decoration of the garden, which are now attracting so much attention abroad, particularly with the French and Belgian cultivators, whose climate is so much more like our own than that of Great Britain, where the sky is too cloudy and the temperature too cool to admit of that rampant growth which alone brings out the real beauty of these plants."

Nothing changes! We have just experienced at least two weeks of weather torment, with very little direct sunlight and instead of the gentle drizzle that we used to experience in England we now have vicious, hateful rain storms, spitting down vast volumes of water at harmful speeds. Being outside in such storms is almost like being physically attacked. But more important, we now never see the sun, it is almost always hidden behind vast rain-carrying clouds.

We had expected to have a good summer, after the promises made by the Met Office, instead it is almost worse than the last two years of misery. At Claines we have not had a barbecue for the last three years, as we haven't had the weather to allow us to light up and cook!

Something bad is happening to our climate, and our Cannas cannot cope with it. Even this years seedlings, which have not been in any contact with virus, are 80% showing leaves that the doomsayers will state is virus. Yet we know that no more than 4% of Canna seeds carry virus, unless we rubbish the work of Dr Koshoo, the only extensive scientific examination performed on the Canna genus, and we now assert that all seed carries its parents virus.

Every other genus accepts their specimens to have environment stress damage, but many advocates of virus in the Canna world insist that anything that is not perfect is virus! This is illogical and does not reflect biology and horticultural experience, where the many causes of stress are recognized and dealt with accordingly. The denial that there is such a thing as plant stress in Canna caused by climate is not going to allow us to move forward at all. Here ends my case my friends!

Cannas get headaches as well!

Plants facing stressful conditions like drought produce their own aspirin-like chemical, US researchers say.

The chemicals are produced as a gas to boost the plant's biochemical defences, say scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

They suggest that monitoring this could give farmers early warning of possible crop failures.

However, they also say the chemicals could affect pollution levels by combining with industrial gases.

Thomas Karl, who led the study, said the chemical triggers "the formation of proteins that boost their biochemical defences and reduce injury".

"Our measurements show that significant amounts of the chemical can be detected in the atmosphere as plants respond to drought, unseasonable temperatures, or other stresses."

Ability to communicate

Writing in the journal Biogeosciences, the researchers said they found the chemical accidentally when they were monitoring emissions of volatile organic compounds in a California walnut grove.

Mr Karl said the chemical - methyl salicylate - could act as a "warning signal" allowing farmers to take action against pests much sooner.

"The earlier you detect that something's going on, the more you can benefit in terms of using fewer pesticides and managing crops better," he said.

The researchers believe it may also help plants to signal danger to one another.

"These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level," says Alex Guenther, a co-author of the study.

"It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere."

My only comment on this scientific revalation is that there must have been a high number of Asprins produced in our Canna beds over the last 2 years!

More on Canna virus

Canna Trials were held in 2002 at the Royal Horticulture Society. The trials were the first occasion that the prevalence of Canna virus was made known to the general public.

Published in Proceedings of The Royal Horticultural Society for that year, is an interesting Canna reference. It states that at a committee meeting held on the 19th November 2002, a committee member stated that the canna virus was less apparent during September and it seemed to be more prevalent where the soil was poor.

This confirms our own experiences at Claines Canna, and it provides us with several possibilities.

The first possibility is that many Canna cultivars suffer stress in northern latitudes, and this results in foliage markings that are the same visually as the effects of various viruses. We saw evidence of this during this last summer, when we had record rain and flooding, and also saw very little direct sun-light. Cultivars that I am convinced are virus-free produced foliage that could easily be confused with virus contaminated foliage. The vocabulary of Canna is very limited, and this is not surprising.

Secondly, there is a viewpoint advocated that much of the worlds Canna is contaminated, but good growing conditions can conceal its presence. That theory could also be confirmed by our own summer experiences if we accepted that hypothesis.

It seemed at one time this year that horticultural authorities were prepared to spend money on research at the UK Science Laboratory, but news from that quarter has become scarce. Therefore, it looks like we will face 2008 in the same sorry state of ignorance, with each of us just doing the best we can.

References:
2002 Proceedings of The Royal Horticultural Society