I'm missing/mourning a couple too. A new Blue Chip Budleia (mini butterfly bush) that I put in last fall didn't make it thru the winter - I'm sad. And a guara that has been an overperformer for half a decade is, apparently, taking this year off. Last spring I even bought it a buddy guara and they seemed to get along quite well, but the newbie didn't reappear and the original came back up, but is very small. Maybe I slighted it by adding another and it's sulking? My Stella d'Oro lillies needed to be divided this spring and I dropped the ball (shovel?) so they are yellowing, but I don't blame them. They will get a lift/divide this winter/spring. As for your other ailing plants, I don't know what to say/think. Seems the last few years have been one climate extreme after another and each plant deals w/the stresses in their own way. Guess we all just have to garden on and see what happens.

Can you post any photos? There could be any number of causes for the problems you describe but impossible to tell from the information provided. One thought about the ES in a pot....has it ever been repotted? Do you fertilize? Plants grown in a container long term generally start to decline because a) they become rootbound, b) the container potting soil begins to breakdown and compact, reducing oxygen exchange and impacting drainage and c) unless routinely fertilized, the plants suffer from nutrient deficiencies. Are the plants indoors? Hydrangeas indoors tend to suffer from lack of humidity and light, in addition to all the issues listed above. No doubt they would ALL benefit from being planted out in the garden and ASAP.

When you spray any poison to get rid of pests you need to be sure you hit the pests and not just the plant, and Rubber Plants are very sensitive to what is sprayed on them and many broad spectrum poisons can cause more problems with them then the insect pest will. As a rule, spider mites reproduce faster when the humidity around the plant they infest is lower, so one easy method of control is to mist the whole plant several times a day to raise that humidity level. Insecticidal soaps, mix 1 teaspoon of a good, real soap (not a detergent) in 1 quart of water, may be a better alternative for many plants.

The rhizome contains genetic information that will duplicate the parent plant. when you take a leaf cutting, the whole reproductive process changes. Just one cell from either I, II, or III will begin the rooting process but that one cell only contains the genetic material coding for whichever layer it comes from. The rhizome contains all of the genetic information from the parent, instead of having to start from scratch at just one type of cell. many African Violets are this way, chimeras. You can reproduce the plant only if you have a full crown (with all the genetic information, including the mutation) but if you take a leaf and try to propagate a new plant, it will not be true to the parent and will lose some of that genetic coding along the way. The cells in the leaves are very simple. They are to do one thing, and one thing only. Now, the cells in the dormant buds contain a different type of cell, one with much more potential than just a leaf cell. imagine it as if the dormant buds are similar to human stem cells, they can grow into almost any type of organ or tissue. Humans can't regenerate limbs (or bodies) so that example has to stop there lol. But with starfish (sea stars!), they can grow a limb back, but if a limb is ripped off, unless it has part of that central core (body), then the arm cells don't have enough genetic information to create a new body. The difference is the TYPE of cell used in starting the plant, whether it's a "stem cell" that holds information for the whole plant or just a leaf cell that is specialized and only holds the genetic information for its layer of leaf cells. That's probably going to be really confusing. It was kind of all over the natural world lol. I love biology though, so I enjoy our conversations!