by James Alexander-Sinclair
A few months ago I wrote about the annoying loss of my wisteria that suddenly turned up its toes...
A few months ago I wrote about the annoying loss of my wisteria that suddenly turned up its toes. If you can cope with the tragic story then read it here.
Anyway, I now have a very vigorous morning glory growing in its place while I try and work out what to plant but, judging by your many comments, I am not alone.
One of the (many) advantages of being a member of the Royal Horticultural Society is that any member can get free advice on plant and disease identification. The RHS advisory service at Wisley handles hundreds of thousands of questions every year. This summer I hosted various Gardeners' Question Time sessions at both the Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows and was staggered by the sheer volume of knowledge that the representatives of the RHS came out with: no matter how obscure the question they always had an answer.
I have been a member of the RHS for about 25 years and have never used the service, so I thought I would do so on your behalf. I wrote to the Society pointing them towards my previous blog and this is their reply:
Dear Mr Alexander-Sinclair
Many thanks for your enquiry. For some years we have noticed an unusual number of wisteria dying, and indeed have suffered casualties amongst the Wisley wisteria. There are probably many causes of this, and sometimes the answer lies in damage to roots by factors such as water-logging, ill-advised heavy pruning at the wrong season and harm to the root zone by construction work nearby.
Sometimes it is apparent that there is fungal damage at the base of the plant - these web profiles point you in the right direction:
Honey fungus
Phytophthora root rots (often linked to wet soils that have been especially prevalent after wet summers in recent years as this disease is more common where soil is moist.)
Often there is no sign of disease and here, especially if there are suckers, we suspect a graft failure between the very variable seedling rootstock and the named scions. This hard to diagnose, but is specially likely if suckers can be seen coming up from below the graft.
Often in the nature of diagnosing plant losses the cause is uncertain, but the prudent gardener assumes disease to be present and replants in a different place or after replacing the soil.
I hope this helps.
Yours sincerely
RHS Members' Advisory Service
So sadly there is no miracle cure, as these things are always a bit more complicated than that, but it is at least a start...
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