This is my first post to this forum and ,sadly, it is abt dead plants (should have posted earlier!). I had 3 separate thriving clumps of sweet woodruff at the beginning of the summer. Now I have 3 dead ones. They slowly turned kind of a grayish green color,got crispy and developed a very sweet smell.
2 clumps were abt 6 ft from each other and the third one was abt 10-12 ft. from those 2. One clump died, then second clump got sickly and died, then third. Nothing around them has been affected. Have 2 clumps in pots that have not been affected (so far).
They never wilted or looked sick before this mysterious "illness" got to them. Once they got sick, they went quickly.
Can anybody help?
Sherry
mysterious sweet woodruff killer
it could be the stress of the weather. we have some 'clumps' that look dead too - but they will come back next year. don't dig them up quite yet.
Thanks - I'll try to bre patient till spring! I still have 2 pots of s. w. and oddly enough they have not been affected (yet! ).
I agree with handhelpers, The heat has gotten to them They will come back next spring. The sweet smell is normal when sweet woodruff dies, Just clip a handfull put in a basket and bring into the house for a room freshener.
Chris
Still thinking about my sweet woodruff tho I hope you're right about it being the weather. But....the fact that the plants were struck down one at a time, in order from the top of the garden to the bottom keeps nagging at me. It's as tho the illness "travelled" from plant to plant.
The other thing that bugs me, is that each plant died (or went dormant) from one side to the other - not a general decline of the entire plant. If you saw it in the middle of the process, one half of the plant was green and healthy- looking and the other half was gray.
Any thoughts on this info?
This message was edited Aug 22, 2006 5:39 PM
It is indeed mysterious about your three plants dying of in such a strange manner.
Perhaps it could be a good idea to carefully dig up one and to examine its roots, and perhaps you would have a clue in what has happened to them ?
Actually I have Sweet Woodruff growing all over my garden, I use it as a kind of lovely ground cover in between taller plants. It thrives very well. I experienced that it is so vigorous that when I pull out little tufts with hardly any roots at all and plant them somewhere else, they happily grow without a sign of distress from the transplantation.
They are very easy to multiply!
The month July has been exceptionally hot and dry here in Belgium with hardly any rain at all and tropical temperatures from 30 to 35°C. My Sweet Woodruff survived all that. Only in the more sunny places it got brown leaf tips, but I confess that I have been watering them.
I really couldn't miss this lovely plant!
Any chance a dog (or other animal) urinated on your sweet woodruff?
Funny you should ask that - I have wondered. A dog couldn't get in to the backyard unless I left the gate open, but the cats love my yard. But cats sort of dig a hole don't they? (Thats what they do in my front bed!) There's been no evidence of that. And I guess it would be unlikely that an animal urinated just on my sweet woodruff plants.
One of the patches is showing some new growth! I am wathcing the other 2.
Sherry
I have a bit of sweet woodruff. If yours all dies and you need new starts, dmail me!
Thanks, happy. I still have 2 little pots of it. They did fine all summer but now one of them is doing exactly what the ones in the ground did! So frustrating.