Question
celosia
Hi Nick. Could you please help me? I planted some celosia seeds-cockscomb-and now find the tops of the plants are all distorted. I planted them in a mix of wood shavings, coco peat and compost, not sterilised. The plants are about 3 weeks old and about 4 inches in height. There were small white spots on the leaves, I treated them with a fungicide
AnswerHi Tony, they look like they are infested with "leafminor" an insect that burrows into the vein of a leaf and spends its larvae days there causing miner damge before emerging as an adult fly; don't be too concerned with this, it is common on many plants and seldom does the damage amount to anything more then "distortion". There isn't really anything you can do about it now, but let it run its course, the larvae is in between the leaf tissue and impervious to any insecticide. The only other thing it could be (and without a close up of the leaf its tough for me to tell) is a simple malformation of the leaf, again nothing to be worried about, for the others in your picture look healthy. Nick
