I don't know the proper name for these lovelies. They have bright orange or red tubular flowers and waxey thick leaves. I have them in hanging baskets and they bloom for a very long time in late summer and into fall. After spending the winter in the greenhouse, they have developed brown dried out-looking sunken spots. Some of the spots are irregularly shaped and some are round. On one of the leaves I see, the brown spot has followed the central vein of the leaf almost the entire length of the leaf. Some of the spots are very small and round. On another leaf, the back of the leaf has a lot of little tiny oblong light grown rough spots.
Our weather changes drastically very quickly. Could that have anything to do with it? At first I thought it might be scale, but I can't scratch any of it off. I sprayed Orthene Systemic on it last week for white flies. Perhaps I caused a chemical burn?
Should I remove the damaged leaves in case it is some sort of fungus? I don't see any insects at all. As a matter of fact, I saw no white flies on it, but they were on all the plants around it, so I sprayed the insecticide as a precaution.
My camera is just not good enough to capture what I'm talking about here. I tried to take pictures but they are so poor they are useless.
Any insight would be appreciated.
Kay
What is the problem with my "lipstick" vines?
Hi Kay ! Sorry to hear about your lipstick plants..hmmmm.not 100% sure but you certainly could have burnt the leaves with the spray but more than likely they just aren't happy with their environment right now...You mentioned the weather changes very fast?...another reason for the brown spots might be..if your weather has been cool and humidity is really high? .It has happened to mine when they get too cool..they turn into real sad sacks.When it happens I just pinch off the affected leaves and move the plant to a warmer area of my house with good bright lighting and plenty of air circulation...they love my kitchen with the ceiling fan running : ) . I am not an expert..far from it..lol..but alot of people here are pretty knowledgable so hopefully someone with a little more experience will be along to help you more shortly.Hopefully someone can assist you more...
Nancy
This group needs pictures (LOL).........we don't care how bad the pics are as ours are often blurry!!
I'm also thinking that perhaps they got too cold? How cold can these plants tolerate?
gessiegail, those pics I took were so bad you could not even tell that they were leaves, let along what was ailing them! lol!
It occurred to me that some of my epiphytic cactus leaves get the same sort of stuff on them. Does that help as some sort of clue?
I really do not know what could be the problem. I kept all my plants on the front porch with winter with 6mil poly wrapped around the front porch and temps kept no lower than 50 degrees. They all looked fantastic when I took the poly off about a month ago. The lipstick plants were blooming along with begonias, hoyas, etc.
I hung all the hoyas out in the trees.............then we had drastic changes of weather and wind for about a month. When i brought some of the hoyas in again, they had big burns on the leaves. I think it was a combination of the cold weather (meaning in the high 40's and winds exceeding 50 mph many days and nights)
I just took all the bad leaves off and now they are looking better all the time and are starting to put on new growth again as they had been doing all winter..........
Maybe someone will come along but I think you are going to have to post some pictures for people to really tell what ails them.
I had some bad looking leaves and some sparse vines (widely spaced leaves) on a plant I purchased recently... I gave it a pretty good pruning, and it's looking much better and putting out some new growth, too. Regardless of whether they've been damaged by cold, fungus, bugs, etc., you may be ahead to just prune away any parts that look bad.
?
Yeah, Critter, that sounds like a plan to me. Usually everything gets a new lease on life with a good trim......even though we hate to do it. They have all summer to get beautiful again.