Many people often ask, is this verticillium? Well (gasp), unfortunately, I have a clear case of verticillium alboatrum (or albo-atrum) affecting my Koto-no-ito. Main identifiers: - Symptoms develop late in summer. - Leaves turn brown - Darkening of branches begin at the tips and propagates downwards (as opposed to V. dahliae) - and, of course, when sectioning a diseased branch, the dark bands along the cambium are evident. I will add the link in the FAQ Gomero
Thanks for these explanatory photos. Sorry about this, is there any reliable treatment you know and plan to apply to this lovely plant? Joe
Gomero, Sorry about your tree. I have an Aureum Golden Fullmoon that I got about 3 years ago, it was about 6 years old. Every year it looses a branch, the branch does not become black like in your tree, but the leaves first wilt and dry, and then the branch changes its color to a dull gray-green and then dries up. When I cut the branch off I do not see the telltale signs (dark rings), but then these branches are pencil thick or less. I always suspected mine had verticilium, but I am not sure. Other growers in TX have metioned that aureum GFM does not do too well in TX, and it looses branches every year and gets smaller. My tree has gone from being almost 3 ft to about a 1 1/2 feet now. I have treated this every year with phyton27, but still lost a branch a year. At this rate, it will become a bonsai in a few years, which is not a bad thing as long as it does not disappear one day :) Is it possible to show some pictures of the dark rings that you see in your tree? thanks, xman
The picture is probably a bit blurry but the darkened cambium layer is well visible. I do not know if the tree can be saved, there are lot of branches affected, but, who knows. For humans and cancer, it is generally accepted that after 5 years without relapse the cancer has been cured. I wonder what it is for maples and Verticillium. For instance, I have one Sango kaku that lost half of the tree ten years ago and without any relapse since then, I would thus assume it is disease free today. It would be nice if some more experienced growers could comment on this. Gomero
Alex, As it was said in the first post it is Verticillium alboatrum (or albo-atrum), not to be confused with the verticillium dahliae. Gomero
