Several leaves on my Baldsmith are dry and wilting. It gets full sun. It's been 90 degrees for the past 3 days but the potting mix has felt moist. Maybe I let it dry out too much? I repotted it into a bark potting mix 1 month ago. Thoughts?
I took a look at the pictures and I don't see a wide spread problem, but I also can't get a close look at the tree either. With that said a few things come to mind. Like you said it may have gotten a little dry at some point. With a canopy that is dense and much wider than the pot; the drip line is outside of the pot, so in light rain the water falls outside of the pot. So we don't think of watering because it "rained over night" or "this morning". Meanwhile the roots are drying out and showing the damage several days after. Because the only moisture that hit inside of the pot was only enough to moisten the very surface, but not the roots below. Another possibility that we noticed in our garden in NE Ohio. We had a cold and wet Spring that lasted up until about 10 days ago. This was the coldest/wet Spring/early summer we ever had. Genetic changes in the leaves occur slowly as they adapt to the environment. With grey skies, cool temperatures, and frequent rainfall the leaves adapt and so does the trees water needs. Then the last 10 days it was a very dramatic jump from April like weather to "the dog days of Summer" with 90+ degrees Fahrenheit, tropical humidity, and bright sun. Any tender new growth was destroyed by the dramatic change turning to a straw like color. Lastly, leafhopper just showed up in the past week from the Gulf states riding the prevailing southern winds. Leafhoppers are very destructive to this seasons growth. When they suck the sap they inject a toxin that causes the tender stem to fail causing it to turn a wilty straw color. Leafhoppers seem to favor dissectum and dwarf palmatum with dense foliage serving as great cover from prey. They tend to favor green cultivars over burgundy. Sometimes they feast and move on while other times they stick around. If you give the canopy a little shake or gently run your fingers along branches from the center of the tree out along the branches you will see them"spring out" or fly out. If you just look for them, they are very quick to hide on the other side of the stem as they are sneaky and fast movers. They need to feel an immediate threat to respond by jumping or flying "flight mode", while just looking they go into "hide mode." Even flying away, they can be hard to see if the lighting isn't right and when they jump it's hard to track where they go.
