Beginner Gardening: Help! My Indian Hawthorn appear to be dead., 1 by RESORT2ME

RESORT2ME wrote:
The upfront ones are no longer green. (The ones farther out, beyond the magnolia, are holly of sorts.) Everything was green as shown, going into cold winter but the nearer ones (Indian Hawthorn) lost all leaves along with other plants that normally die-back with freezing. So far this Spring, I see no live Indian Hawthorn. Their branches snap off as dead, dry sticks. I'll go further into the plants checking for life. I figure if dead, branches will snap off rather than bend.
I've been in no rush to break them back for fear of doing damage, but here it is mid-April and no signs of life.

Last year about this time, the flowering crab-apple was near full bloom when I found tent-worms in several areas. I wet down the whole tree with Malathion spray. Not only did it get rid of worms but all blossoms dropped also. The leaves didn't appear to look hurt any. Just now I thought of this as maybe the reason these plants look dead. They are planted, wrapped under that tree. It never occurred to me that Malathion would kill Indian Hawthorn.
What might I treat Indian Hawthorn with to counteract my foolishness? Yeah, I know a slap up side the head, but that won't help the plants.

This message was edited Apr 14, 2014 4:04 PM