Mystery behavior

Like many of you, my garden has suffered from higher than normal temperatures, starting last spring. Add sun and periods of dryness and you are left with a lot of foliage plants that are unhappy and showing it with crisp, curling, drooping and brown leaves.

But not necessarily the plants you would expect. Consider my Brunnera.

B. 'Emerald Mist' is in rather a shady spot and doesn't have all that much white or silver in the foliage and yet it looks miserable. 

B. 'Looking Glass' is quite silvery and is partly under a big Tree Peony but still unhappy.

Just a few feet away from the above plants is B. 'Dawson's White.' It is finally getting a bit of brown along some leaf edges but nothing problematic. These leaves are huge and have looked beautiful all season. 

Brunnera 'Alexandria' has had a browned leaf now and then but generally looked good. This plant gets eastern sun but is never in any deep shade. It's getting enough sun for Calamintha to flower.

All four plants are Brunnera macrophylla and in locations that I would consider moist enough and shady enough. But clearly this summer showed me that may not be the case. I don't plan to move anyone until I see what next summer is like. What I'd really like to do, is to divide B.'Dawson's White' as it is clearly a a plant that doesn't need babying. 

I've had it for a long time and had forgotten all about it until last summer. I re-discovered it then as a small fading plant in a very shady spot. I moved it to this sunnier location and was thrilled when it came up this year and put on a lot of growth. We'll see if it's big enough next year for me to try dividing it.

Comments

[Kris P]

It's a conundrum why some plants fail to thrive under conditions that seem appropriate while others don't but then I think of chaos theory and the old saw about a butterfly flapping its wings hundreds of miles away...Could drying winds be an issue in some spots?

[hb]

Getting the same amount of water? Feeling around their bases with your fingers?

Here trees are sucking much more moisture out of the soil than usual, and not looking too happy.

[Frank]

Actually all of them look better than mine. Perhaps some of your plants bloomed more than others? Flowering seems to cause the leaves to struggle a bit, and if things were wetter here I would fully cut mine back and wait for fresh growth. As it is I'm happy to see any leaves left on it.