Hello, found your forum and thought I might be able to get some help here. With all that I have read it seems as though this may be verticillium wilt however would like to know for sure. I purchased this tree at the beginning of the summer from a local plant growers soceity on the square in our town. It seemed to do fine for quite a while but now I am noticing brown spots on the end of the leaves and the small branches are all turning black. I live in Alabama and have had a quite a bit of rain this summer so I have left it alone. Aside from the initial fertilizer at the time of planting this guy I have added none. As you can see from the picture the branches are still green inside. I have not cut a large branch to see if there are rings inside as it is still only 3 ft or so and was hoping to avoid cutting anything substantial. Any help would be appreciated. This was a fairly expensive tree and I would love to keep it. Thanks
Hi Lind, VW is really hard to positively ID. There are other issues which present the same type of symptoms. It's been a rainy season here in Philly and I can say that several of my JMs have succumbed to what i would guess is VW. I suggest poking around over in the Japanese Maple area and run a few searches and read through some threads. Maybe ask your question again over there.
