Probably aster yellows.

reply to your own post.. and add the extra pix

ken

Could be aster yellows, could be any number of the weird echinacea problems I'm seeing this year. I've probably yanked more coneflowers than dandelions this year.

Have come to the conclusion that that's likely to be coneflower rosette mite.

Reason not aster yellows: the plant otherwise looks healthy.

See recent thread in GW Perennial Forum: "Coneflower Rosette Mite".

Have come to the conclusion that that's likely to be coneflower rosette mite.

Reason not aster yellows: the plant otherwise looks healthy.

See recent thread in GW Perennial Forum: "Coneflower Rosette Mite".

Really bad mite issue. You are not getting the green petals or witches broom type of growth with the mini blooms forming from each disc flower.... Which would a AY.

Here's another picture of the entire plant. It looks very healthy with no leaf damage. Doesn't mite damage cause the leaves to look like it has tiny spots all over it? Don't mites suck the plant's sap? The leaves should look bad, but they aren't. Puzzling. At any rate the plant looks quite healthy. Couldn't this be attributed to the seedlings of hybridized plants not performing? I thought this to be generally the case with seedling volunteers. There are a few flowers on it as you can see.

I'll see if I can find pictures of "aster yellows" on the internet.

This post was edited by summerstar on Wed, Jul 31, 13 at 15:32

The particular (Eriophyid) mite that deforms Echinacea flowers locates itself deep within the flowers and only damages the flowers.

I had assumed a problem related to hybridization caused the flower deformation I saw (below: Oct 2, 2012) in an Echinacea 'Sundown' ('Big Sky' series) last year.

I now think it was coneflower rosette mite damage.

This post was edited by SunnyBorders on Wed, Jul 31, 13 at 16:51

Hey ya-all,

I ran a search for pictures of coneflower rosette mite. From what I saw it looks as though that's what I'm dealing with; not aster yellows. There's no yellowing on any of my cone flowers. I've also read articles from various universities to get more information. I was disappointed when the search didn't suggest an organic spray to deal with this mite, just an intense clean up in the fall. I'm looking for an application to wipe out these little suckers . . . no pun intended.

FINDING SOLUTIONS:

Are there any gardeners out there who have had success with coneflower rosette mite using the older varieties? Several people suggested planting Magnus and/or White Swan, the old cultivars could be successful against this mite. I'd like to hear from any who have done this. I grew Magnus about 10 years ago and liked the plant. And . . .

One forum reply said a thorough fall clean up didn't help them. I found another post where people used an insecticidal soap and another used Neem. What do you think? I'd welcome your input.

Hey there Totally,

Hope springs eternal so we won't give up on this sucker yet! I'm going to post or call Andre Viette's nursery and see if he knows of a spray for coneflower rosette mite. Do you ever pick up his radio show in MD on Saturday mornings---8:00 a.m.? It runs year-round. It's especially nice to listen to in the winter months and early spring when you're yearning to get out and garden. He's been around the gardening world for years and knows EVERYTHING. I'll see what I can learn about this pest and post back.

Thanks for the tip on the radio show. I'll have to check that out. It would nice to have a gardening show now that HGTV has become real estate central.

I'll be interested to hear what you find out about an effective spray for the mites. Most of what I've read suggests that the mites are too deep in the cone for a
spray to work.

TotallyConfused

As I've said elsewhere, I suspect that Echinacea which are being sold have been sprayed with commercially permitted miticides in nurseries. Still clearly some of us are buying infested plants unaware.

If Echinacea are being sprayed before we buy them, toxic chemicals that would not be permitted for consumer use, are simply controlling the problem. They are not solving it.

I checked with Bayers 800 number and they said their product does not cover coneflower rosette mite. Andre Viette's nursery didn't have an answer either, but I did find one right here at this website. Here's what I learned . . .

On Gardenweb there was a similar post in early July with lots of replies regarding this mite and AY. All there came up with no fix for the coneflower mite. Most everyone replying there said they were going to get rid of all their coneflowers! There was one response though that seemed to walk a middle line. Here it is quoted in the next paragraph:

"But for the echinacea, I have had infected plants that i just remove the infected blooms as i saw them ... without going to extra step of "litter removal" later in the year.... and then later that same year or the next season they bloom out just fine. For me is on par with the work of other garden jobs... without being too much of a pain."

I'd like to give her technique a try. What do I have to lose? I don't want to dig out all my coneflowers! The mites get into SOME of the buds, but apparently not all. Cutting off what looks like an affected flower in the spring isn't too much work. You'd get the mites then and could dispose of them so they don't hatch out to return to your garden the next year. The next step would be to get rid of the foliage in the fall so eggs can't winter over. And if you can, pull away all the mulch and you'd be done. Maybe this will work for you.

I'd like to know what they're going to replace their coneflowers with???

In Heaven there will be NO gardening problems!

It always seems to something, from year to year, doesn't it?

I just wanted to mention that one year I purchased some open pollinated Echinacea seeds from ebay. They were a mixture of "at that time" newer cultivars - one that I remember was in that group was Art's Pride, I think. These plants were all pre-Big Sky series varieties.

The seeds germinated and there were some very healthy plants that produced coneflowers with no petals or very tiny, short petals. Not exactly what I was looking for. I have no reason to think they had any kind of disease, just that they hybrid plants produced seeds that produced plants with no or small petals.

Just thought I'd mention this in this thread about Echies.
Linda

summerstar, I've had a patch of Magnus fo close to 10 years. This year, I had a few with deformed blooms, so I cut them dowm and took them to my extension office. They had mites.

Hoever as you can see from this picture, the majority of my plants are fine. I'm planning to do what that other poster mentioned - cut down any deformed blooms as I catch them. In the fall, cut the plants down and dispose of all the mulch around them.

{{gwi:247881}}

I don't mind the idea of cutting off the mite infested blooms IF I could be sure it was mites. What concerns me is the similarity between mites and early aster yellows. I'm also concerned that by cutting off all the funky looking buds, I won't recognize the signs of aster yellows until much later.
I had written off the odd looking cones on my White Swans as mite damage until one of them began producing the witches broom from one of the cones.

As to what to use in place of coneflowers, that is the million dollar question for me.

TotallyConfused

Whatever people decide to do with their echs with mites, just be sure you don't spray something like Sevin on them, as my understanding is that it is an insecticide, but not a miticide. Actually something in it is a growth hormone for mites. I would think the cutting and destroying of the affected flowers would be a good treatment.

Aster yellows was easy for me to identify since half the plant was stunted.