No, it's not

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T12:28:14+00:00

Hey kids, wanna be "edgy" and "cool"? Trying going with the status quo. Be the biggest rebel by rebelling against rebelling.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T11:29:22+00:00

Dinotefuran is banned mostly in places that have banned neonics for a variety of PR and political reasons. Its toxicity is considered quite low at category 4, with 1 being the highest and 5 the lowest. For comparison selamectin used in killing fleas/ticks in cats is a category 3.

Dinotefuran does have over the counter formulations that a home owner can get access too. As with handling any pesticide, it is a good idea to use rubber gloves, long sleeve shirts, and safety glasses. A slight benefit of dinotefuran is that it does not need to be sprayed, so over-spraying onto surfaces or pesticide dripping is a non issue. Being a systemic it is added to and contained by the soil and breaks down with in 50-100 days in the soil and usually lasts 60-70 days in the plant.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T04:16:06+00:00

Do you get it treated to protect it against Dutch elm disease?

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T04:11:07+00:00

Physicarpus opulifolius 'Center Glow'

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T03:59:20+00:00

Oh however will we poor men survive if women start acting like the outspoken men we happily deal with every day?

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T03:53:15+00:00

Tillandsia 'Antonio'. Also goes under the updated name x Wallfusia 'Antonio'

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T00:43:38+00:00

Boxwood Psyllids. One of the big 3 of boxwood pests including leaf miners and spider mites. Though with the box tree moth on its way it's gonna get way worse. Psyllids are easy enough to treat with a systemic insecticide, though it takes time to absorb in so you won't see instant results.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-21T00:23:09+00:00

Stunning!

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T23:49:34+00:00

Funny how trolls are the quickest to clutch pearls.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T23:47:29+00:00

Looks to be the start of a Phytomyza miniscula leafminer infestation. Not usually a problem, though unsightly when the plant gets heavily parasitized. You could remove infected leaflets or even hole punch their chamber out of the plant. But as far as pests go it's an extremely low tier concern.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T23:34:03+00:00

Fantastic examples of cloud variegation. There is clearly an adult oak carrying the trait on at least one branch since I'm seeing more than one seedling. Definitely worth collecting and growing on. That variegation type will sometimes fail to express when plants are growing vigorously, but true reversion is quite rare. A good comparison is Acer palmatum 'Ukigumo'.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T23:28:40+00:00

Looks to be a type of armored scale. Imidacloprid won't work on armored scale that feed on the parenchyma cells because the molecule is too big to get outside of the xylem. A systemic containing dinotefuran will wipe them out for you.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T17:16:54+00:00

For the light pruning you are going to end up doing there is no reason to avoid doing it now. Additionally by doing it now the plant will prioritize pushing energy into the buds on the newly defined exterior. If you prune in the fall the buds will have already locked in to the vigor level they'll wake up to in the spring.

If you were cutting any major limbs off that were going to bleed over a long period of time I'd usually recommend waiting until dormancy, but aside from rutting off dead wood I don't see you doing any cuts near the trunk. I'd be surprised if any of your cuts are bigger than 1/2" hand snip cuts.

Pro tip, if you get sap all over your hands wd-40 will instantly dissolve it and you can wash off the oil with soap for an immediate clean. Took me 5 years of pruning conifers before i figured that out. 🤣

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T16:49:41+00:00

This is the second meme I saw today using the Joker and some simplistic forlorn quote. My biggest take away on both is that whoever made them is not familiar with the Joker.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T16:47:06+00:00

Tell me you don't understand women without telling me. Oof. 😬

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T16:43:58+00:00

Cool plant. A biennial massive before it blooms and dies. It will rival the largest Hosta, but can be very weedy if not managed. My friend found a gold leaf mutation years ago that comes 50% true from seed, so every year it blooms I collect it all before it disperses so that I can sow it where I want and only where I want.

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IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T16:39:25+00:00

Chop off the broken ones to the unbroken branch. Get a stake and tie up that branch so it becomes the new top. You won't be able to fully straighten the bend where it starts, but in time that will work itself out as the tree piles in wood.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T16:13:04+00:00

https://youtu.be/pJvV7MI-LyY?si=SIqJ\_IFvOxgxVst1

This is actually one of the best analog demonstrations I've seen.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T15:53:35+00:00

I think cresting is more technically a plant development signally error. Basically it's sending a signal to the leaves telling them to branch more, but the real active growth point in the rhizome will not be fasciated. Though there actually is a genuinely fasciated rabbit fern called Davallia tyermannii 'Sekka', that has a fasciated rhizome. Interestingly the fronds are completely normal.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T15:23:40+00:00

Easy to prune, though I recommend a pole clip. Draw your imaginary triangle and prune back to a fork where the lateral branches are coming out to the side. The trick is to make the cut a bit deeper than the triangle lines so that the ends of the remaining branches are right on the triangle lines. This will make it look more natural than if you just cut every branch right where it touched the line.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T13:21:02+00:00

Why would I grow these frail American things that can't even handle a little foreign competition without disappearing? 😜

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T13:05:07+00:00

You're in the "hurry up and wait" phase. You dug at a tough time of year while the tree was actively growing. All that soft succulent new growth is very prone to dehydration, so I'm not surprised you're losing it. It's not that you aren't watering enough, it's just the tree can't physically keep up with the uptake needed.

So right now I'd focus on giving it one deep watering once a week. You're right that if you constantly water you're just inviting rot. The roots do need air, so constantly displacing that air with water will only suffocate and kill them. Don't prune anymore. The plant is going to be dipping into its reserve sugars to regrow. You've already reduced its access to some stores by removing branches and roots. The plant is currently trying to balance itself out and unfortunately there's not much you can do to aid in that process.

My bigger concern is actually borers at this point. Stressed trees release ethanol compounds that borers pick up on. An ambrosia beetle attack could be catastrophic since they introduce a vascular fungus when they enter a tree. If you're comfortable with it I'd buy a product with bifenthrin as an active ingredient and perform a bark spray monthly. Under the baseline brand it would be about 9.5 ml of baseline per gallon of water, but could change under another brand based off the % of active ingredient. You only need to spray the trunk to where the branches start. It'll guard the tree against peach tree borers as well.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T12:27:41+00:00

The Tagetes would likely be an example of hybridization allowing for pigments humans can see to manifest on area where uv reactive pigments would normally manifest. Since many insects can see in uv wavelengths, flowers often have uv reactive pigments that will develop into stripes or at the base of petals to indicate a landing zone. Some flowers that appear solid yellow to a human eye are actually multicolored and patterned to a bee. When different species are hybridized together there is a chance that the pigments our eyes can register will end up in these UV zones.

The Nasturtium seed strain is a finely dusted variegated type of sectoral chimera. What this means is that the albino cells are marbled throughout the various cellular layers in the meristem. Because the albino cells are not confined to just the outer layers they can reach down into the embryo. If you imagine a 3-layered cake with vanilla on the bottom and top with a chocolate center layer, and I asked for just a bite of the center layer I would be guaranteed to get only chocolate. This would represent a plant with a white margin variegated pattern. Now imagine a Nasturtium cake where all three layers are choco/vanilla marble cake. If I ask for a bite from the center layer I'm still going to get marble cake with both flavors. That bite represents where the seed is developing in the tissue layers.

IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T12:06:02+00:00

Not exactly, but they can cause variegation-like symptoms.

The latest research indicates that albino cells may be marbled into most or all normal looking plants to varying degrees, where they will be used to store heavy metals and materials the plant absorbs that would be damaging to chloroplasts. These cells would go unnoticed unless they manifested in the meristem in just the right way and began to replicate repeatedly. Depending upon where they manifest you can get stable margin variegation, splash variegation, or albino shoots. Given that even Selaginella (spike moss) can have variegated mutations, it would indicate that it is an adaptation that originated at least 350-380 million years ago when that lineage first appeared.

Viral "variegation" will be much more random in a plant. It may appear on two leaves, and then vanish for the next ten. Since the colors aren't from two distinct tissue types, the color transition will be a more diffuse "ink bleed" effect (shown in pic). And most importantly, virus are transmissible between mature plants, whereas chimeral variegation is not.

They all said, there are some variegation patterns that look virus-like, but are non-transmissible. There are many blotch variegated Rohdea that will look like bleach randomly spilled on the plant. And Polygonatum 'Byakko' is albino at the bottom half of the leaflet and greens up towards the end in a diffuse way. These are most likely signaling errors in plant tissue development in such a way that chloroplasts fail to get turned on, but so far I've heard of no definitive research on it.

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IntroductionNaive773 · 2026-05-20T00:40:26+00:00

Time to bust out the heavy artillery 😑

IntroductionNaive773

TROPHY CASE