white lumps on tulips

11 years ago

Please see photo. All the tulips in one of my beds have this, and the leaves are sickly with brown blotches. I thought the tulips were doing badly because of the extreme temp fluctuations this spring, hot then near freezing. But this looks like an infection of some sort.

What should i do with these tulips now? and is there anything I can do to prevent this for next year? Do I have to dig up and destroy all of the current ones and disinfect the soil in some way? Any advise appreciated. thank you.

Thanks.

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Comments (7)

morz8 - Washington Coast
11 years ago
You might check for articles and images of 'tulip fire' aka botrytis blight of tulips and compare to your own.
"Small, whitish, somewhat blistered spots develop on colored tulip flowers"

Here is a link that might be useful: Diseases of tulips
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
11 years ago
any frost/freeze since the tulip was in bud form???

notice its all to one side.. like the flower was still furled... with half the petal exposed ... and half tucked under the next petal ...

is that pattern consistent around the whole flower.. ???

any indication of the same.. on the inner petals ...

obviously.. if its cold damage.. then there is nothing to worry about next year ... other than a cruel mother nature ....

ken
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jean001a
11 years ago
That's botrytis -- gray mold, but without the fuzzy gray stuff. Too later to do anything.
emmyt
Original Author
11 years ago
Thank you. I looked up botrytis, and it looks just like that. They say to discard the infected plants and bulbs and burn them, but I'm not sure if I could tell about the bulbs. Should I just pull them all and discard them?

Is there a way to get rid of it in the soil so I can plant new bulbs in the fall?
Again thanks.
morz8 - Washington Coast
11 years ago
Emmy, do you have another spot you could grow tulips for a couple of seasons? The article - U/Illinois.edu - linked above, suggests not replanting tulips in that same spot for two years or you could have a high likelihood of reinfection.
emmyt
Original Author
11 years ago
morz8, thanks. sorry, I don't see the link to the article you mentioned.

I have heard about not planting tulips in the same area for 2 or even 3 years. But I'm confused by this -- I cut bak the leaves in summer and leave the bulbs in the ground over winter for them to come up successive years, which they have, so I'm not really replanting. Do people usually dig up the bulbs each year and replant??

I'm thinking now I should dig all of these up and discard them since they were all infected, and plant some annuals there for a couple of years? (ugh! they are such a beautiful variety that came in a mix, so I don't know their names to replace them!)

Thanks.
morz8 - Washington Coast
11 years ago
Link here

Here is a link that might be useful: Diseases of tulips