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Old 22-05-2020, 08:06 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Jeff Layman[_2_] Jeff Layman[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2008
Posts: 2,166
Default Clematis problem!

On 22/05/20 15:48, Primrose wrote:
On 22/05/2020 15:27, Jeff Layman wrote:
On 22/05/20 14:58, Primrose wrote:
Yesterday the flowers were very perky.Â* We've had some really strong
winds today.Â* I went out to water and noticed that some of clematis
flowers are wilting.Â* Not all them are wilting just a few.Â* Photo:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0bx7l3l9z...s_222.jpg?dl=0

Could it be the wind?Â* The leaves look healthy enough.


You can always give it some water to see if that helps. But in my
non-expert opinion, any sudden wilt on a clematis, particularly at this
time of the year, is almost diagnostic of clematis wilt even if the
leaves haven't (yet) wilted.

Thank you, I assume that the plants I ordered last October must have had
the disease.


Not necessarily; in fact it probably very unlikely.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoma_clematidina#Disease_development:
"When spores of Phoma clematidina land on a leaf of a susceptible plant
under the right environmental conditions (moisture, temperature 15 to 25
°C), they will germinate within 6 hours and infect leaf tissues directly
or via leaf hairs. "

If your plant is still alive on Sunday then it hasn't got clematis wilt.
Even if it has, and you cut it off at ground level, it will recover. I
posted here two weeks ago "Clematis wilt - early this year" that my C.
viticella 'Margot Koster' had got wilt and I had pruned it to ground
level. I just checked, and it has a new shoot about 25 cm high.
Remarkably, it looks as though the top bud will be a flower rather than
a leaf.

--

Jeff