fuchsia rust

Symptoms

Bright orange-yellow powdery pustules form in masses on the leaf underside, with corresponding pale yellow to reddish blotches on the upper surface; heavily infected leaves yellow, brown and fall early; flowering and vigour decline. The orange spores rub off onto fingers.

Easily confused with

• fuchsia gall mite

  How to tell them apart: Pucciniastrum epilobii (fuchsia rust) is a fungus: look on the LOWER leaf surface for raised, powdery pustules in bright orange to orange-yellow, arranged in scattered spots that rub off as coloured dust on a finger; the matching UPPER surface shows pale yellow blotches. The leaf stays flat and normal in shape — only discoloured. Aculops fuchsiae (fuchsia gall mite) is a microscopic eriophyid mite: it never makes powdery spores but instead distorts and THICKENS the tissue, producing reddish, swollen, blistered, curled and often hairy galled growth concentrated at shoot tips, young leaves and flower buds. If the deformed tissue is dusty and wipes off orange it is rust; if it is fleshy, twisted and stuck-on it is the gall mite.