One of the more irritating aspects of gardening (for me) is the horrible similarity between plants which are either lack.ing water or basically drowning. You might think it would be obvious to deduce what exactly is going on, but, at least for me, I am often in some doubt, not least because the majority of my garden consists of various pots and containers and large raised beds...with random soil mixes. Otoh, the allotment is always at risk from phytopthera. I have only had to deal with a wilt fungus such as verticillium once (The most affected plant was my Forest Pansy cercis). I have no experience of clematis wilt (so apols for rubbish and irrelevant waffling).

I am satisfied with calling it Wilt, unspecified. I am not going to spray it. I'll remove the ugly leaves. If it continues to grow and replace the wilted leaves, problem solved,

I am curious, though

I have had a now unidentified clematis in the same location for many years. But for the past 3 or 4 years consecutively it has succumbed to "wilt". It grows fine in the spring, lots of flower buds but by late June or early July it "collapses". Each spring I say I will move it but I leave it there as I have no place to put it.

I found this page about clematis wilt from the RHS site in the UK very interesting - it both talked about the wilt being more common in Group 2 clematis and also about it being caused by other issues. I used to grow a beautiful Vyvyan Pennell clematis that never wilted - but was eventually ’snailed to death’ when it was attacked by hordes of young snails!!

Whatever is bothering your clematis it is NOT wilt. Both fungal causes of wilt (extremely rare) as well as the more common cultural cause do not present like that. Both are vascular in nature - the vine stems are unable to transport moisture and nutrients in sufficient quantity to support the heavy topgrowth and the vine or a single stem dies off from the top down. Almost never any random spotting or browning of individual leaves.

Like RP, I'd suspect some sort of water issue. I get a bit of similar dieback on some of my clematis collection from time to time and just clip it off when it appears.

single stem dies off from the top down

This is exactly what I see for "my" clematis and once I notice top foliage dying, the rest of the stem "collapses" very quickly.

^^^Then you have some sort of wilt. Given that this is a well established clem, then there is a strong likelihood you have the fungal type. The cultural causes of wilt are generally restricted to relative young or not well established vines as they rarely ever exhibit these symptoms once they hit 5 years or so.

And yes, both types of wilt hit fast. One day the vine looks fine and the next an entire stem will be brown and shriveled.

GG I was using the term 'wilt' generically which was careless for a Clematis question.

I have read about Clematis specific wilt and I did not think this was it because 90% of the plant is thriving.. And if I understand your comment about vascular/water we've probably gotten 4 inches of water over the last 2 weeks. Everything looks beaten up and "wilted"

So my suspicion was 'too much water' .

Thanks for the rest of the informaton. Helpful