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perylene

Agastache problem

Perylene
10 years ago

I wanted to try growing Agastache cana one more time before I threw in the towel, and I thought I had the previous plant deaths beat until yesterday. I grew this plant from seed, and it was doing really well with lots of pink blooms (that the hummingbirds mostly ignored, oh well). The whole plant changed from healthy to dead in about 3 days. You can't tell from the photos, but if you could touch the plant it would feel completely dried out -- leaves crumble under your fingers and the stems snap clean off. The leaves never turned brown.


Leaves


Dried out flower


Base of stems

Does anybody know what causes this? This issue has struck every Agastache cana I've grown as well as my previous Agastache 'Tutti-frutti', Agastache mexicana 'Sangria', Agastache foeniculum, and Agastache 'Blue Fortune'. I've also seen this same problem kill a couple of my bee balms in past years, even ones that are heat and humidity tolerant. I don't think it's a watering issue, but once the plants start to get this dried out appearance, they won't recover with additional water. The roots are still attached when I pull the plants out. The plants, if grown for multiple years, always come back in early spring and die in late spring to mid summer. The only thing I can guess is some sort of cotton root rot, despite the lack of rain and only supplemental watering on my part.


For a weird comparison, I also planted another seed-grown Agastache cana in a pot at the same time as a test subject. It's still chugging along so far. I also have groups of (in ground) 2 or 3 year old Agastache aurantiaca and Agastache rupestris all over my backyard that have never had a problem. It's a mystery.

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