Like so many of your commentators my 10 yr old wisteria bloomed, wilted and died (?) last June. I have left it and now there is new growth from the base. However I fear that I will have to remove all of the old wood.
I belive that our 25 year old wisteria has the ssame issues. It seems to bloom evey other year. Last year it bloomed but not as it normally would have for the 2nd year blooming. Then we began to notice the dead branches. We trimed most of them out. then this spring we see that we have twice as many dead branches. They seem to have brown slashed on some of them. No signs of bugs or any fungas. I am thinking it is dying. What is the age for wisteria?
I have a Wisteria plant on my patio which has been beautiful for many years previously. I am not a gardener and have relied apon this lovely plant each spring to add colour to this area of our garden. This spring I have had the same problems as everyone else, although interestingly, the purple flowers are still in bloom but from the bottom up!!! The leaves are all a yellowy brown; I just sit by and watch helplessly and hope that it will survive!!!
My 5 year old wisteria was in full bud , green, not yellow anywhere, until today. We had a bad frost last night, and it is now completely wilted. It looks just like Clematis wilt. Like everyone else, do we leave it to recover, or cut it right back????
I have a 4 year old wisteria bloomed beautifully every year but flowers appeared open fully, I have some small leaves but they are very limp and the flower buds are falling off, they never properly bloomed. Help!
My wisteria sinensis is about 10 years old and covers a long brick wall. Up until the day before yesterday it was blooming well and the perfume was fabulous. It seems almost overnight the flowers have gone limp and shrivelling and falling off. The leaf seems to be growing though. What is this?
In June 2009 our wisteria suddenly wilted. The whole plant covering the entire front of our house appeared to die. It was about 10 years old and had been doing extremely well until then. Earlier this spring I checked for new growth and none found. I cut the wisteria to ground level and found rot internally. The good news is that new shoots are now sprouting by the dozen
My giant Wisteria, over 30 years old, covering two sides of a large house and up 'til 2008 healthy, vigorous and rampantly growing and flowering is now in extremis. In 2008 it flowered magnificently then sent out long tendrils as usual. Then suddenly these tendrils died back and the leaves fell. The second flowering in August did not take place. In 2009 there were very few flowers and few leaves and many brances had died. This year 2010 whole branches, some 20ft long are dead and rotten while on others green shoots have sprouted somewhat weedily from parts of the main trunk. There were a few flowers and branches with leaves and these are green at present.....I have searched the web for information on pests and diseases, checked images of the likely culprits and then checked my wisteria with a magnifying glass on its leaves, stems, branches, trunk and going to the main root. I cannot find any sign at all of the scale insects (re recent news 2010) nor of phytophora ramorum (recent news re oaks and ornamental trees and shrubs) nor of honey fungus or crown gall. There is no sign of a graft below which I might search for suckers and I cannot see any healthy suckers either. The plant is not over or underwatered, it has been properly and regularly pruned. I am a microbiologist by training and I do recognise fungi when I see them and I do not see any of these mentioned. However the leaves are mottled and the bark has a slightly rusty red colour in parts so there could be a systemic infection and/or physiological condition. I now see that many gardeners all over the country are having similar problems with their Wisteria and when 30 year old specimens go down all over the country I do think that the RHS could attempt a far better response than they have done to James A-S. We can all access the web and I'm sure that most of us have already checked out these basic facts accordingly so general so-so advice is just not good enough. What we need from the RHS is specific help with this problem that shows a more pro-active approach. I am not a member, but how about the RHS has a look at a Wisteria of an RHS member, or indeed several members with this now common problem, attempts to identify a specific cause scientifically and then gives more specific advice in an on-line article - that I would certainly join up to access. Many of us are not new gardeners and are frustrated and sad at the obvious sickness of these plants and a lack of knowledge about what to do with them.
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As a follow up to this post may I refer you to this:
http://blog.gardenersworld.com/2009/09/14/wilting-wisteria-an-update/
It contains the answer from the RHS.
Not very encouraging, I'm afraid.