Daphne's aren't particularly common around here and I've been doing some research online so I know they're prone to dying for no apparent reason, but I was hoping someone might be able to give me advice on mine.

Ive had this shrub for about 4 years with amazing performance up to this year. This spring I noticed 1 branch had died off, which, given the weird winter we had, I wasn't shocked about.

But since then, I've had 3 more branches in the same area die off.

It flowered amazingly well as usual this spring. There's no scaling, bugs, or other signs of illness but I do have another branch showing some signs of hardship on the other side.

I did water a little more than usual as I laid sod and had to keep it wet but if it was damp roots I would expect the entire shrub to be in distress?

Last week I sprinkled some blood meal as per some reading I'd done online about giving it some iron after blooming.

Thanking you in advance!

Here are photos.

Spring bloom





The dead area







The distressed branch on the other side



The rest of the shrub which seems normal?

I used to wrap mine in the winter with burlap. It did fine for several years then one winter I didn't wrap it and although it started to leaf out and did flower on a few branches in spring, it promptly died. According to this Missouri Botanical Garden page it does not take well to cold winters in full sun, and mine had both. It looks like yours may too?

http://www.missouribotanicalga...

thanks for the reply!

since planting it, i've wrapped it with just a mesh cage over the winter. it has gotten buried a couple of times from the plow without any issues in the spring. but the cedar next to it is also VERY unhappy so it's possibly related and something about this winter/spring has upset them both.

did yours die off all at once, or just a branch at a time like this?

It's a few years ago now but my recollection is that it went almost a branch at a time and eventually the whole thing was dead. I don't remember its having any problems the year before, so it was all gone in the one season.

Yikes! Okay thanks again. I'll continue watching it...so far nothing else has died so crossing my fingers! 🤞

There's a slight possibility voles may have had something to do with it because there were a couple of holes not far from it. They didn't gnaw on the branches though and I assumed they were more likely after the hyacinth bulbs planted around the daphne. Whether that disturbed the roots enough to cause the daphne's demise I don't know - always in the back of my mind was the reputation for daphne sudden death that you mentioned.