umbrella bloom

Umbrella Bloom

What is “Umbrella bloom”?  Normal spring growth of fruiting uprights includes both blooms and upright growth above the flowers.  Umbrella bloom is what they call it when the uprights flower, but there are no vegetative shoots.    

At the Twilight Meeting in April, several growers mentioned that they were observing unusually high percentages of umbrella bloom in their bogs.  I've since collected data to try to quantify the umbrella bloom observastions and have seen bogs with as much as 60% umbrella bloom!