The day did start with a very interesting sunrise, the fog and rising sun made a very nice one.

Both hydrangeas and camellias are fairly common for plants here in Sydney and I’ve found both with problems today.

I’ll start with the hydrangea, or rather several hydrangeas. All of them looked as stressed as the leaf above. Many leaves were a bit burnt by the sun and others, like the leaf above, had this silvery pattern on their upper surface. They are in the sun for a lot of the day with little shade, sitting in growing media in a garden two levels up in an apartment block. The area is sheltered from the wind. Not knowing what this was, I had to do a bit of research once I got home.

Having done some research, it looks like it could be powdery mildew. In hydrangeas, powdery mildew is encouraged by warm, humid conditions-the white powdery nature of the fungal disease not being that clear in the photo above. It has been wet and relatively warm recently, so that would have had an impact. The best thing to do is prune off all the affected leaves.

Now onto the camellia. All the camellias I saw had the same pattern on their upper surface leaves. Again for the camellias-planted in a sunny spot in a general growing mix, but may get more wind in certain circumstances.

Doing my research on the camellias, the problem is camellia tea mite, something I’ve never seen before. The mites cause the bronzing along the midrib of the infected leaves. The mites do favour dry conditions, which isn’t a surprise based on where the camellias were planted.

I’m going to do more research on camellia tea mite and add it to my bank of random knowledge-it will probably be used more in the future.