The plant H fulva has a subspecies which is a triploid and is sterile. It is the common orange daylily and as one looks around each year this time and see them everywhere in the world one should remember that they are all the same plant! Yes, the one very same plant since they propagate only vegetatively.
Now they seem to attack weak hybrids. Let me explain.
Here is the root structure of what was at one time an attractive fertile hybrid. It is not totally invaded by H fulva, which managed to kill off the hybrid, I suspect it took 2 years to do that, and then sent out its runners to an adjacent hybrid.
These are some runners left behind. Even a little piece of this is capable of total regeneration. It is like glioblastoma multiforme or an ovarian cancer. Just one cell spreads out everywhere.
Now washing the roots one see the pathognomonic orange colored root and runner structures. One can see the attack on the former plant. The H fulvas seem to focus on certain hybrids. I have lost about a dozen so far to this attack. Species seem to be immune at least as of now.
Here is a closer look and the poor old hybrid, just gone! How did it die? Starved or consumed. It the plant a herbivore? That could be a first.
Its behavior seems directed and its method of attack seem quite effective.
Here is an array of the above plant after it has been separated.
There are some interesting questions here. I now know the what and how, I am still trying to figure out the why!
Specifically:
1. Why do the H fulvas target existing hybrids. The runners are almost directed to clusters of a hybrid which they then attach to, devour, and spread from there.
2. Is it a chemical attractant or random. My analysis seems to indicate it is targeted. I have now seen it on three dozen hybrids. However there are some on which there is nothing.
3. How can it be prevented? Good question since I believe just one H fulva cell, yes one cell, is enough to regenerate.
Interesting problem.
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