My mimosa started wilting in about July and hasn't snapped out of it. I thought maybe we were giving it too much water (we watered it daily) but then I started reading about mimosa wilt. Is it possible for a mimosa to wilt due to too much heat and too much water or is it most likely the dreaded fungus?

It's only lost 2 leaves the rest are just wilted. I looked at pictures on the internet of mimosa wilt and none of them look like my tree.

Thanks for any advice and I'll try to figure out how to get a pic uploaded.

Jeff

Have you had the hot dry summer Missouri has?

Is your tree a new transplant or has it been in the ground awhile?

If I understand mimosa use correctly Mimosa are for fast growth and have relatively short life spans. Secret in zone six is they will seed prolifically and you will have a new one or two or a hundred then the first one dies.

They are displacing redbuds and our native dogwoods along I-44 on the way to the Ozarks. A shame they seed so aggressively, one of the few trees which flowers later in the summer. The other day at the St Louis Zoo I even noticed they have a chocolate one, something I had only seen before at a botanical garden in KC. Very unique. It was done flowering though.

Up where you are is Mimosa invasive?

I was desperate to get a hardy zone 5b mimosa last year so I saw some growing in a guys yard and knocked on his door to ask if he'd mind giving me some seeds. He graciously allowed me to come in his yard and dig up as many seedlings as I wanted. You should have seen his yard! The mimosas were like grass. While I was digging I noticed that his yard was full of rocks mixed in with the soil. Then it struck me that this must be one of the major conditions that mimosas need.

Have you ever tried to grow them from seed? To get them to sprout you have to scratch the seed otherwise they don't do anything. This must be why they are so invasive in MO and TN due to the rocky soils.

Anyway, my mimosa started small this year and now has achieved a length of about 6 feet or more. I was really happy to see it progressing so fast but then it started wilting. It has some offshoots that aren't wilting but the main branch has very deformed leaves as you go about half way up.

I'm really hoping that I just watered it too much. The heat here in Springfield was in the 90's for pretty much all of July. We just got back from Branson MO though and I only saw one mimosa that looked like mine.

I definately saw alot of them along I-44.

PS - Mimosa's don't need rocky soil. They do just fine in soil with no rocks at all.

Either way I'm extatic that you don't think it's mimosa wilt famartin. I've been waiting for years to have my own yard so I can grow one of these.

And no, they don't need rocks, they grow just fine in the sandy soil down here.

On the other hand, I see Japanese Honeysuckles are going very strong persistently.

Also note you will see more invasive species near metropolitan centers where humans plant them!

If I go far far enough into the countryside I see little honeysuckle. In town it is in every tree line.

Silver Maples, Acer saccharinum, are native to all of Illinois, so they aren't invasive there (by definition). They may be aggressive or annoying, but that's a whole different thing. I can certainly understand someone saying they are aggressive, or annoying, after the thousands of them I have had to pull out flower beds.

Native Status of Acer saccharinum:

I believe most Native plants that are endangered because of human activities and foreign insects, NOT "invasive" plant species. Plants are different from animals.

I suspect, as mentioned above, that the problem isn't nearly as bad in many places/climates as it is around here, but, around here, large areas are becoming nothing but monocultures of Albizia julibrissin. It's not unusual to see a site of 20 acres or more with no other trees present. This plant seems to be giving kudzu a run for its money.

Brandon7, I had know idea silver maples were so widespread in Tennessee.