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12/02/10, 03:18 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Western WA
Posts: 4,730
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Do you think this bush is dead?
We have had this bush on our property ever since we purchased this place about 25 years ago and it was well established at that time. I don't know what the real name of the bush is but we call it the, 'MTD bush' because there is a broken down MTD riding lawnmower in there somewhere.
About a week ago we had a bout of sub-freezing weather with a couple days of 8-10 degrees. I noticed a few days after that this bush had gone black, all at once, every part of the bush including the main bush and all the individual shoots that have sprouted from the ground and grown over the years. I'm assuming it was the weather that caused this but it's been through plenty of winters many of which had several days of sub freezing temps. It doesn't look good.
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12/02/10, 04:00 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Missouri
Posts: 592
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It'll come back again, it just went dormant all of a sudden instead of losing its leaves gradually first.
Hard freeze does that around here too.
Does it usually have berries in the late fall?
Bloom spring or fall?
Is it thorny? It might be aralia spinosa, Devil's Walking Stick.
No thorns, it looks like a sumac, maybe.
I like 'MTD Bush' 
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Liz
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12/02/10, 05:04 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Western WA
Posts: 4,730
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No berries that I've seen. Blooms in July/August. No thorns. Never seen the leaves go dark like that. Now I have to find another place to stash the MTD I guess.
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12/02/10, 05:31 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: North Fla
Posts: 803
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It kind of looks like a white wysteria. Do the flowers smell like grape jelly? If that is what it is, it will come back.
Kitty
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12/02/10, 05:41 PM
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Original recipe!
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: NC foothills
Posts: 13,984
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntKitty
It kind of looks like a white wysteria. Do the flowers smell like grape jelly? If that is what it is, it will come back.
Kitty
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That was my thought. It looks like white wysteria. This is a great opportunity for it to get a new lease on life. Go ahead and clear away the dead wood and then mulch heavily with some good compost underneath and it will be glorious again.
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12/02/10, 05:55 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Eastern North Carolina
Posts: 34,240
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If it's Wisteria, you can't kill it with anything short of a nuclear bomb!
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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
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12/02/10, 06:57 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: eastern ohio
Posts: 234
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I would go with Chickenista's advise and wait until spring to see how it is.
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12/02/10, 07:37 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 10,943
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bearfootfarm
If it's Wisteria, you can't kill it with anything short of a nuclear bomb!
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I hope that you are wrong. My wife bout two and I am supposed to plant them. 
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God must have loved stupid people because he made so many of them.
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12/04/10, 06:46 PM
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 170
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bearfootfarm
If it's Wisteria, you can't kill it with anything short of a nuclear bomb!
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unless you live in northern minnesota. Ask me how I know! 
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12/04/10, 09:34 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: B.C.
Posts: 386
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Wisteria has a very long droopy "pea type" flower followed by bean pods. An incredibly vigorous woody vine. Blooming in early spring before or as the leaves come out I believe. And they are deciduous, at this point in the season shouldn't wisterias leaves have long fallen off?
Without a close up pic I would say that is not wisteria.
Look up "Sorbaria sorbifolia". It is not exact but more likely. And Sorbaria can survive very cold winters, colder than Washington state can muster up.
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12/05/10, 01:04 AM
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Banned
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 7,802
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Those flowers and leaves, it looks like a male goatsbeard, their flowers are fuller and showier than the female goatsbeard. I have a female goatsbeard in the back yard, it went black like that too. They're practically indestructible but have a lot of water in their leaves and branches until they go dormant and that sudden deep coldsnap we all got so early made the foliage and branches suddenly go black like that because of cells rupturing.
As long as the root system wasn't badly frozen yours should come back okay at ground level next year. You will probably have to clean it up and cut away a lot of the dead branches that got frozen and ruptured before dormancy had a chance to set in.
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12/05/10, 11:56 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: B.C.
Posts: 386
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Naturelover, is your goatsbeard Aruncus? I just looked goatsbeard up in the encyclopedia and there are 5 plants with that name, all different genus's but that seemed closest, but the leaves were much larger.
The Aruncus I know is a herbacious perennial that you cut to the ground every fall.
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12/05/10, 12:09 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Carthage, Texas
Posts: 12,261
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I always wait till the next spring, whenever a disaster strikes. Sometimes I can tell, by cutting into a limb... if it's still pliable, it's alive... if it's crumbly, it's dead. However, sometimes plants will resprout from the roots.
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Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming
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12/05/10, 03:54 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Eastern North Carolina
Posts: 34,240
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Quote:
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I hope that you are wrong. My wife bout two and I am supposed to plant them
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They're fine IF they are where you want them
I had one in the middle of a yard that was in the way, and it took YEARS of cutting it down to the ground, and spraying with Roundup to make it stop resprouting.
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12/05/10, 04:24 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 4,624
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I'm not thinking it's wysteria, but wanted to add that wysteria blooms on second year growth. If you trim it way back, it won't bloom the next year.
I also think that it likely has a good enough root system to come back from root if the branches have died. But that's just me thinking.
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12/05/10, 07:02 PM
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Banned
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 7,802
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter
Naturelover, is your goatsbeard Aruncus? I just looked goatsbeard up in the encyclopedia and there are 5 plants with that name, all different genus's but that seemed closest, but the leaves were much larger.
The Aruncus I know is a herbacious perennial that you cut to the ground every fall.
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Dexter, I don't know if it's aruncus or astilbe, I didn't plant it. The leaves on mine are slightly larger than what they appear to be in the photo above. It's hard to tell in the photo what the individual leaves look like, and the only way to judge their size is by comparing them with the size of the dandelion? flowers growing in front of the bush, but it's my understanding that male leaves are more delicate than female, and have showier, heavier flower panicles. I can tell from those leaves that it isn't knotweed which has similar flower panicles and bushy appearance but the leaves are heart shaped. I have a knotweed clump in the yard too, and it also blackened in that cold snap.
If Wayne had said that it grows red berries then I might have identified that bush as dwarf sambucus racemosa (red elderberry) which looks a lot like that and is indigenous to the west coast.
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Last edited by naturelover; 12/05/10 at 07:39 PM.
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12/05/10, 07:48 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: B.C.
Posts: 386
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bearfootfarm
They're fine IF they are where you want them
I had one in the middle of a yard that was in the way, and it took YEARS of cutting it down to the ground, and spraying with Roundup to make it stop resprouting.
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A shovel and pick axe would give instant gratification. If your ground would allow it.
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12/05/10, 09:37 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: True Northern California
Posts: 13,461
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Take your finger nail and scrape some of the bark off on a few branches half way down or so- if it's green in the cambrium layer, it will probably re-leaf out. If not, I'd wait til spring to see if it resprouts.
I've had the occasional shrub frost bit to the ground and be back to normal in a couple of years.
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12/06/10, 04:25 PM
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a yard full of chickens
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Join Date: May 2006
Location: WA
Posts: 688
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Looks like a red elderberry, which is native and weed-like. I've cut red elderberries to the ground and they came back, so if it's one of those it will likely re-incarnate itself even if it's been killed back to the roots.
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12/06/10, 05:23 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Western WA
Posts: 4,730
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Thanks very much for the replies. I've been reading through various descriptions and viewing images and I think it is the Sorbaria Sorbifolia, which looks like this:
I found this description to be particularly appropriate, especially the part about it being 'invasive' . 
Quote:
If you like plants that stay in tidy, little assigned corners, this is not the plant for you. But if you have a large space to fill and love plants with attitude, this is your baby. False spireas form large masses of arching branches that are covered with green pinnate leaves. Billowy white sprays of flowers appear in mid- to late summer. Mature plants spread where you let them. There is a wide range of closely related species and selections, but there’s not much difference between them.
Noteworthy characteristics: Can be invasive in some areas.
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