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Bryan Dallolio and Roger Batt are looking closely at a Rush Skeletonweed plant. Bryan comments that this Rusk Skeletonweed plant is showing an awful lot of damage from our biological controls. There are three of them. There is a rust that you typically see down on the basal leaves back when they are green. Once they are dessicated like this, you can't really see that. There is a stem boring midge and a gall forming mite that affect this plant. And they travel from plant to plant. Those are all things that were introduced originally from the National Biological Control Institute in Bozeman, Montana. Bryan goes on to show Roger a plant and says that this is a perfect example of what they are trying to do with biological controls on Rush Skeletonweed. This particular daughter plant doesn't appear to have any intact seed heads and it's ability to survive is vastly impared. When we can get all three biological controls working on it, we get a plant like this. It seems like if we just get two out of three, the plants survive and continue to create seeds. Roger reiterates that you almost need all three to really make a huge impact and virtually stop the production of the seed. He comments that it really has been hammered - it looks good.
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