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Hi, I have three cardinal flower plants I planted last summer, that are coming up really nicely. One of them has brownish red spots on its leaves, although it doesn't seem to hurt its growth spurt. Is this some sort of mildew? I can't rub it off. It doesn't seem to be affecting the other two plants as of yet. Any one have any ideas about what it is and what I should do? Thanks! (BTW, I'm zone 5, east central Illinois).
If it is Rust, rust generally is very specific to what plant it will infect so it's unlikely to spread to any of your other plants besides your other cardinal flowers. To reduce the chance of fungus infections in general, not sure if it applies to rust avoid watering them from above, keep the leaves dry.
Get yourself some fungicide, the natural fungicides use sulfur which is toxic to the proteins in fungus. Unfortunately if it is rust you should particularly spray underneath the leaves which is not easy and remove heavily infested leaves, rust forms postules on the bottom of the leaves that produce millions of rust spores. You can read about rust here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)
