Hydrangea paniculata Vanilla Strawberry type flowers turned all white this year

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clrok Flint Township, MI(Zone 6a) Sep 04, 2018

I have a Hydrangea paniculata in my yard, it's very old. Almost a tree. I have no idea what variety it is but Hydrangea paniculata Vanilla Strawberry seems to be very close to the flower color it's always had. Every year for the 9yrs I've been here it has been beautiful with huge flowers that start pinkish white with dark pink freckles and turn to almost maroon as they age. Very very large, over a foot long flower clusters. Nothing has changed in my care of this plant, I've never fed it or even watered it.

This year though, it has many more blooms but they are very small maybe 5" across and 5" long, and they are totally white. Only fading to tan as they age. If you look closely you can still see small dark pink freckles on the petals but very few.

What could have happened? We had a very very dry summer last year and the tree/bush lost a lot of leaves. The winter was normal, cold and long. I'm so afraid that it is dying perhaps. It's very pretty with it's small white flowers, but the original blooms were awe inspiring!

Any ideas what has changed and is there anything I can do to have the original huge white to dark pink flower clusters again? I live west of the city of Flint, Michigan and not sure what my zone is. We're slightly rural here and typically our yard is quite wet with the exception of last year's almost drought conditions. I have a lot of photos of the original tree with flowers and will take one of the current flowers and try to load them later. Thanks for any info!

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clrok Flint Township, MI(Zone 6a) Sep 04, 2018

Here's a couple pics of the bush as it normally looks. This is 2016 but it looked the same last year. Photo color is off a bit as it's really more of a pinkish maroon, not as yellow red as these pics look. The flower clusters start off pink at the base to white at the tips, then slowly get more "freckles" as the whole cluster gets darker and darker pink/red from the base to the tip. Tomorrow I'll take of pics of it flowering now with the all white flowers. (Found one a closeup pic of newly opened clusters when they are more white, just starting to show the pink but guess I can't add photos once I've submitted a post.

This message was edited Sep 5, 2018 12:52 AM

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