Information and discussion regarding garden diseases, insects and other unwelcome critters.
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November 21, 2017 | #1 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: OH 6a
Posts: 592
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Alien parasitic tuber.
This is the craziest (or scariest) thing I've ever seen. I went to this nursery more than a year ago and the owner gave me a ginger plant. It has small tubers hanging from it from a root string, which was peculiar to me. I tasted a bit and it tasted bad. He is from Uganda so I thought it's something different.
I put it in my garden, now I went to dig up my ginger and turmeric. First off, I realized it was a galangal, not ginger. There are stringed tubers attaching itself to both the galangal and my turmeric rhizomes and spreading itself toward other turmeric plants 2-3 feet away. It seems to be acting as a parasite and leeching the nutrients off the rhizomes of other plants and proliferating itself. It do not have any above ground growth, surviving solely by attaching itself to the turmeric/ginger underground. I got a bit alarmed and dig up the soil in that area and removed them as much as I can. I broke the tuber in half, it's white starchy inside with not much of a smell. Tried to look it up, the closest thing I find is the 'apios' genus, and similar looking to hopniss, but I'm sure it isn't. I doubt it is edible, but fortunately I didn't got sick from it when I first tasted it. Please don't ask me what was on my mind, I had other plants from the nursery so I thought this one was okay. Notice in the photos the hairy tubers are attached by a string onto the turmeric rhizome. The big tumeric lump was from a 6ft tall plant, it was supposed to be a much bigger rhizome, but the parasite tubers seems to be taking nutrients away from it. Last edited by maxjohnson; November 21, 2017 at 02:29 PM. |
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