well.. i hope you dont have soil in the pot.. how big is it.. how big is the pot.. and what is the potting media???? and what protection.. in z9.. have you used.. to keep teh pot from getting over 100 degrees in july/aug.. besides cloudy days of rain ???? for trees... the media should be near straight bark chunks... any amount of peat.. would mean.. with all the rain.. you are probably rotting off the roots ..;. tip it out of the pot.. and see what the root ends look like... if they are not white.. there is you answer ... more facts ken

Because of the timing and circumstances surrounding this planting, I'd be very hesitant to immediately assume it was some sort of disease issue. We are more likely looking at transplant shock and an early dormancy, which can often be triggered by planting late in the season. Excessive rainfall during this period could certainly account for what you describe as well. Retaining dried, dead foliage is pretty common for this selection also. As long as the container is filled with a high quality, fast draining potting soil and offers adequate drainage, I'd wait until spring to see how these trees bud out before I'd do any thing else. They will probably be just fine.

I think as an additional point, the leaves on the old wood probably have more fungal spores on them, but this is balanced out by the stem having more stored carbohydrates, and this may be one reason that ALL of my cuttings are doing well, even the older stems from previous 2 generations of blooming (ie 2 generations of new growth on this wood, I still use for cuttings and it is rooting really well nevertheless, in 10 days. I think the ultra cold conditions and the very low angle of the sun, which at this time of year has loads of far red component, may be activating the genes for rooting - this is pure speculation on my part, but it is quite amazing to see these big old stems rooting so fast - could it be the photomorphogenesis effect of the far red component on the phytochrome red stimulating or activating the rooting gene? Could this be simulating the effects of etiolation??? I see from google search of "far red" "rooting" that far red light stimulates rooting (reason for why I use warm white fluorescent only) Normally sunlight has a much higher component of 660nm compared to 730nm. At my latitude, the sun right now is really low in the sky; this means a lot more of the shorter wavelengths are being scattered off. I could speculate that the plant can sense this shift, and uses this shift to tell that winter is very near, and to proliferate the roots, and store carbohydrates in the roots and stems. Another wierd thing is I notice that a lot of the stems are a very very red color, compared to the usual dark green, and I don't mean like changing colors, because the old leaves are green, and the new leaves and stems are red. There must be something going on. George? Paul Mozarowski Here is a link that might be useful: Washington Edu Botany Class

Nancy, Gold is better than plain brown. Honestly, anything is better than plain brown. Around Thursday or so I noticed green leaves falling from some trees---they didn't even turn brown first. I think our trees are confused. Why wouldn't they be? Every week they are exposed to lows in the 30s and highs in the 90s. How they even know what season we are in at this point is beyond me. Currently it is 90 degrees at our Mesonet station and 89 at our house. There's reports of haziness and smoke in the air, but none of us are spotting any plumes of smoke, so I think that, as the rumored cold front moves across the state, it may be pushing smoke, fog, haze, smog, dust or whatever ahead of it. There was a 1,700 acre wildfire in the county west of us yesterday and it looked like smoke was hanging over the river this morning, so maybe it is that. Our gold foliage peaked around Thursday or Friday and is going to a dull golden brown today. I believe the hard freeze we had a few days ago has really impacted the tree foliage. Further south in Texas where the freeze didn't happen or at least was not as prolonged as it was here, they have better foliage color than we do right now. At least 3 or 4 of the red oaks in the yeard near our house have some red, and our big red oak near the road, which is my favorite tree, is beginning to show some red. It probably will peak next week though it is hard to tell in this weather. We turned back the clocks at bedtime last night so at least we'd be in sync with the rest of the area when we woke up today. It didn't matter what time the clock was showing---I woke up at the same time I do every single day, even if the clock showed it was an hour earlier. My body clock gets pretty firmly set on a time and doesn't really care what the clock says. It takes me at least a month to adjust to a time change and then before you know it, we're springing forward or falling back all over again. Jennifer, I'm glad you feel a little better today and hope you didn't cough your way through making the announcement at church. Hot and windy, hot and windy, hot and windy. It feels more like earliest September than early November. Chris sent me a text about a half-hour ago---a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio, TX. Word is several people were shot, including children, before police arrived and took out the shooter. He said he had heard 15 people were down, but I haven't seen any firm number on any media yet, and often early report are erroneous. It just seems to me like the world has gone mad---it is sad when people are not safe in church. And, in a state like Texas with open carry, it is unfortunate someone in that church wasn't armed because perhaps they could have stopped the shooter. It seems wrong to carry a gun to church, but we cannot kid ourselves---these shootings can happen anywhere any more. I'd like to be working in the garden, but all the swarms are still out there---Asian lady bugs, wasps, bees, yellow jackets....so I'm indoors. Oh, and the fire ants and harvester ants all are out and scurrying around. I guess maybe they are busy storing up provisions for winter. Dawn