Our butterfly bushes which come through winter evergreen are now showing yellowing foliage and the tops are dying back. Is this caused by disease, fungus?

Any possibility you could upload a photo?

Thanks, Alyssa, for some reason the computer seems to have been changed and not being a very computer knowledgeable person, I don't know how to upload pictures. I have been looking at websites with pictures of diseases and nematodes on butterfly bushes, but I can't say for sure if this is the problem. We have had a lot of rain this year and we are wondering if that is causing some of this to happen, plus the dead tops must be caused by the light freeze we had a few days ago. We have decided to wait and do nothing for now. I absolutely will not have sprays put on these plants.

Hi Avedon,

Well, of course the plants could have just gotten a little too much water. However, it might be a good idea to check the plants for spider mites, just to make sure. I understand that butterfly bushes are commonly afflicted with them. They start showing up around this time of year too.
Hold a piece of light colored paper under a branch and tap the leaves a few times. Then check the paper for small orange moving dots. Spider mites are very small, about the size of a period at the end of a sentence :-)

Art