It's August so the subject has come around once again to cone flowers, Aster Yellows, and rosette mite. I found my old post on GardenWeb from last summer and reread all the replies again. So many others have this same problem with cone flowers. But I'm wondering if the Aster Yellows virus is found in the ground where I've removed a cone flower that had the disease.

Looking at all my Echinacea this morning, I found deformed witches broom flowers on a three-year old cone flower. And though it pained me to do it, I dug it up to be trashed. I felt terrible doing it, but I'd been reading about Aster Yellows this week. Virtually all the state university websites came to the same conclusion. If the flowers exhibit the witches broom distortion (among other things), the plant has the Aster Yellows virus and cannot be saved. It has to be removed or it will spread to other plants susceptible to AY through a leaf hopper insect.

My plant didn't exhibit any of the yellowing or paleness of the foliage, but the witches broom was obvious on two stems. Last year this same plant had the rosette mite problem, so I cut it back to the ground to deal with the mite and removed the foliage. It came back strong and all the leaves appeared healthy. Now this year it's Aster Yellows. I removed two other volunteer cone flower plants in my border, roots and all, that had a similar flower head problem. This flower was really distorted and the stem near the flower was thick, kind of flat and twisted, so out they came.

I think I'll switch to the old 1990s perennial of the year winner, 'Magnus' and replace them in the spring if that will do any good. I've already planted two old sites with 'Magnus' because I just haven't found another flower to replace cone flowers.

BUT, now I'm wondering if the old planting site is infected from the Aster Yellow virus. Does anyone know? Maybe I'm getting paranoiac, but I think it's a legitimate question. I'd sure appreciate your input if any of you know about this soil contamination thing.