Allotments 4 All

I have had a willow for the last 5 years, growing well till last Sunday when I noticed the leaves were curling up. Now it looks dead as a dodo.
Nothing else untoward on the plot, any ideas what could have caused the death?

Cheers, Dave.

It may have been , believe it or not, lack of water. I know this sounds ridiculous given all the rain we're getting but it may have been delivered the killer blow last year in the droughty period. Established trees can have the inertia to carry on to the next year when infact their time is unfortunately up.

how about anthracnose of willow? maybe not. I just like saying the name

it is a bad disease though, and they do look terrible with it.

Willows need moist soil, so my guess is the drought.

A mature corkscrew willow, at least 10 years old, growing nearby has lost nearly 70% of its growth over the last two months.
It grows on a grass area, and has had nothing but natural rainfall (or not!)
I have one growing in a half-barrel, and nearly lost that to drought too, for failing to realise that what rain had fallen was not even damping the soil.

Funny, although the leaves are curled up and look dead, there are buds appearing on the branches. Maybe it is not dead after all. Glad I didn't dig it up and throw it.

The willow den on my allotment looks pretty dead too at the moment, but there are some buds on it so I'm going to leave it and see what happens. I think that dry spring we had stressed all the willows, but my fedge and the tepees are all green with loads of new growth so it may just be the position of the den that has made it suffer as it is more sheltered so probably didn't get so much rain.... :-\

If a willow decides to go into "shut down" mode, through lack of water, it will kill all its leaves in 48hrs. If it happens, just water it copiously, and keep the soil wet. You cant over-water a willow, it's a riverside tree.

You may lose some of the very fine twigs and extremities, but the rest should be fine, and start to produce new leaf buds in spring.