Patience required
This manzanita was planted in 1999, not too long after the garden was begun. It’s high enough to sit under, with impressive, shaggy bark and medium green leaves. It’s even getting ready to flower, although the flowers are just white, bell-shaped ericaceous things that are pleasant to look at if not spectacularly showy.
Our Manzanita has bark like the Dr. Hurd Manzanita. We thought it was diseased because of the bark. The plant is losing it’s leaves, we think it is dying. We have been watering the plant thinking that was the problem? Should we be doing that?
The bark is supposed to be reddish – purple, and a bit scaly depending on the season. It should also be a bit satiny, not dull.
Our plant grew wonderfully for years, putting on about a foot of growth each year. Then things started to go wrong. Growth slowed; the plant produced far fewer flowers, then none at all. Then the leaves became thinner, duller, and drooped.
I tried watering very carefully on cooler summer days, and this seemed to help – for a while.
Then the leaves began to turn black, with each branch blackening in succession. Cracks appeared at the base of the main branches. The bark became dull and grayer. The dead, black leaves hang sadly onto the branches unless stripped off.
Why would the plant suddenly die like that? It never got summer water until it started to look bad (except for a very rare thunderstorm), it grew strongly for years. We didn’t fertilize or disturb the soil around the plant. There could be some kind of pest that kills manzanitas over the course of several years. We just don’t know.
I asked other native plant gardeners, and many do give occasional summer water to manzanitas. Our Louis Edmunds manzanita does get summer water and is thriving, and it’s in the same soil as the Dr. Hurd.
Now we’re looking for something more reliable for clay soil to replace the manzanita. Hopefully something we won’t wait years for it to grow, only for the plant to suddenly die for no apparent reason!