maybe the leaves are burning..

BECAUSE YOU KEEP CUTTING ALL ALL THE ROOTS TO KEEP MOVING IT AROUND ...

why dont you leave it be.. for 5 years .. and see if it can grow enough roots to be a happy camper ...

otherwise .. get rid of it.. it is apparently driving you insane.. lol

ken

I don't keep moving it around, it's only been moved twice in 5 or more years... When it was dormant...

And I didn't cut any roots either, I got the entire rootball...

i hope you know i was just kidding around with you ... forgive me if it bothered you ...

regardless.. it takes a tree.. shrub.. conifer 2 to 4 years to get 'established' ... intact rootmass or not ...

i suspect your has never got established.. especially if you can move it.. with no apparent new root growth .. because it sounds like you keep moving the same root ball ...

my best advice .. dont move it again .. and see if it can acclimate to its latest placement ... and if not... consider being done with it ...

i have had established plants in full blistering sun .. and near full shade.. and i dont recall the leaves burning.. and i usually had to run them over with the truck because.. once established.. they were so aggressive.. they wanted to swallow the house ...

unless you are really zone pushing in z7 .. and i would defer on that ....

ken

I apologize. I didn't know and I've been running into a lot of ...not so pleasant individuals and conversations online lately.

I'm pretty sure I'm in zone 7a so that shouldn't be pushing it, although the sun can get pretty fierce.

I don't want to give up on it because I hate just letting something die and also because it was a birthday present to my mom a few years back.

Maybe I can erect some kind of partial shade over it so it can at least work on it's roots without stressing from the sun. Or maybe I should trim the foliage down so it will put more growth into it's roots... I dunno.

Hmmmm.... I wonder if it's verticillium wilt disease. It certainly looks like it but the conditions aren't right.

I first got it and planted it in full sun, it looked crispy. I moved it to shade with more fertile and moist soil, and the crispyness went away (although those conditions are supposed to make it prone to verticillium wilt disease). Then I move it to full sun, and all of a sudden, the leaves are crispy again.

The full sun location has well draining, not too rich soil, which is the ideal soil for smoke tree.

It's like everything is reversed...

I also don't see verticillium wilt disease on any of my other trees, and I have a lot of hardwoods.

I'll treat it for it and see what happens.

Fantastic... No treatment known to work.

Can you post pics? Cotinus is quite prone to verticillium. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with soil conditions/drainage. Verticillium is a very opportunistic pathogen and any kind of stress, including transplanting, drought, weather, etc., or mechanical injury (root damage during move, pruning) can allow the disease inroads to infection. You can also have verticillium on one susceptible species with another susceptible species immdiately adjacent completely disease-free.

btw, cotinus is quite adaptable to zones 5-9 and is very happy in full sun (also with the best coloring) but needs consistent and even soil moisture.

is your smoke tree in southern exposure, and very close to your house? especially with corners where fences meet houses a microclimate can exist that reflects heat from the house that can be hot enough to burn the leaves of a smoke tree, particularly a purple leaved one. established or not this can happen. it will do this consistently every July. smoke trees love full sun but do not like the previously mentioned senario. there are some chemicals designed to alleviate some of heat stress but I have not tried them, maybe silicone,or something.