Thanks for all your answers- Thanks Ken for the link- the "Clerodendrum ugandense" just might be what I'm looking for. It fits the description and is just the thing some off the wall catalouge would feature as a new novelty plant ( I dislike some of the plants these catalouges over glorify to unsuspecting customers. Then these people end up with something that wont survive in their zone or worse yet, takes over their whole yard). I will print some of these discriptions and show to my customers- hopely we will have solved the mystery ;) Thanks again!

You didn't say; was this a variegated plant that is now producing green leaves or a green plant that is becoming variegated? The former is the much, much more common occurrence, so I will write my answer with that scenario in mind. The variegated buddleia plants, as with many variegated varieties of plants, is not very stable. You need to be watchful and prune off any green-leaved branches that develop as soon as possible. Variegated buddleia are much less vigorous, so the green-leafed branches that form will quickly become the dominate leaf form of a bush, if allowed. This is referred to as reverting. Variegated plants that do not tend to revert to non-variegated growth are referred to as stable. This post was edited by Gyr_Falcon on Wed, Jul 2, 14 at 1:14

I haven't considered spider mites -- I'll have to check mine out and see if they are attacking them. With the dry, hot weather, I am seeing a TON of mites in the general landscape, on everything from weeds to trees. I've got about 40 butterfly bushes going now, so if mites like them I'm sure at least some of them will have them. I don't know what is up with the multiple posts -- I posted a reply on one of these forums the other day and it showed up 5 times. Of course, if these forums had a decent user interface like many do, we would have the ability to edit, to delete, etc. Funny, iVillage is owned by NBC/Universal, a very large company, and they can't manage to upgrade their software past the level of about 1995/1996 when I first discovered the Internet. I guess it's because they're broke and no one watches their network anymore?

Hey, Im in zone 9, and the same exact thing happened to mine. It was that cold we had for a couple of days in january i believe. It hit like 32 or something for 2 days. That did it for me. I cut it down to about 10 inches, but there is no green or new growth on it. Im getting a little worried that perhaps the cold killed it. I was at a few nurseries and saw that they were putting out growth everywhere. I have the Harlequin Davidii species. I am anxiously waiting for it to grow 'somewhing' for a few weeks, if not i might just replace it.