H. mutabilis, commonly known as Cotton rose or Confederate rose, is a shrub valuable for its ornamental, medicinal, and edible uses, but it has recently been affected by a severe rot issue in Chengdu Botanical Garden, leading to a 40.4% infection rate.
The affected plants exhibited yellowing leaves, darkening stems and roots, and ultimately died within two months, with the presence of white mycelium indicating fungal infection when humidity levels exceeded 90%.
Isolates from the infected plants were identified as a type of Fusarium, showing significant growth characteristics, and pathogenicity tests confirmed the fungus's ability to induce root and stem rot in H. mutabilis seedlings through inoculation with conidia.
Podocarpus macrophyllus (Thunb.) D. Don is a perennial evergreen tree of the Podocarpaceae family, which is widely used in landscape, medicine and forest interplanting (Qin et al.