HELP!!! Twisty Baby Lace Lady!!!

Ok..so I bought this tree about two weeks ago...have left it in the sun as was told by the nursery and watered about every other day because it is super hot and super dry here lately..it is about 6 feet tall and was very very healthy. transported it in the back of a truck laying down. I've been watering it at night. And when i watered it day before yesterday it was fine. I come home today to see just about all the tree looking horrible...I'm going to include two pictures...the first is about what the leaves look like fine...(what little are left that look that way) and the second is what it is doing now...I checked the soil and it isn't dry nor is it soaking wet...just a little damp...Please help!! I don't now what I'm doing wrong or if it is likely the trip from the nursery that shocked it...I bought a weeping cherry at the same time and several of its leaves died and fell off but nothing as drastic as this poor thing and the cherry was the biggest getting the worst of the wind on the drive home so I would have thought it would have been the one hit the worst...As you can tell I'm a newbie, and they are both going to be planted this Sunday unless one of you thinks I should leave this poor thing alone...Please please any advice would be greatly appreciated. Here is the good leaves...

And here is a picture of the bad..

I think the nursery may have given you bad advice...especially if the plant's in a black nursery container, if it's been very hot it may not be a great idea to leave it baking in the sun. The black pot will absorb heat from the sun and basically cook your roots (if it's very hot, you can run into this problem with any color container, but black makes the problem worse). Even if you're watering it enough, roots aren't designed to tolerate temperature extremes as much as the leaves are, so you can't let the roots get too hot. The other possibility if the roots aren't cooked is that it needs more water. Or it could have had some disease already when you bought it, and it just didn't really show symptoms until just now. But I think it's more likely it's either too little water or cooked roots. I'd move the plant to an area where it'll at least get shade during the hottest part of the day, make sure it's getting enough water, and see if it perks back up.

I would definitely not plant it this weekend--it's not good to plant something that's already stressed. Honestly in your area it's probably still a little too hot for planting anyway, if you plant things during hot weather that just adds extra stress, so you're better off waiting until fall. I obviously don't live anywhere near you though, so I don't know what your daytime temps are like now. But if it's still hot, the plants will be better off in containers for now (as long as you keep the containers a bit out of the sun so the roots don't get fried)

How fast was the truck going while you were taking the plant home?

Is it mostly the leaves at the ends of the branches that look "crispy"? If so, and you took the plant on the highway/freeway, 60 to 70 mph winds dried out those leaves and it just took a couple of days for the damage to show up.

Even with the plant lying down in the bed of the truck it was way too windy for the plant's leaves. You or the nursery should have wrapped the plant in burlap/plastic/something to protect the plant while it was being transported.

Gently scratch the bark to see if there is live cambium under the bark. Is there any green cambium? If so, then it's just the leaves that were damaged by the high wind speed during transport and the plant should be fine. As ecrane3 said, don't leave the plant in the hot sun to bake. shade the pot or even sink the pot in the ground, up to the rim, until it's cooler and then plant.

The only other thing I can think of is that someone was spraying an herbicide in the area and it drifted and damaged the plant, but those leaves don't really look like they've been damaged in that way. I'm guessing they were just dried out due to being moved at a high speed without any protection.
Good luck,
Mike

Thanks for the advice you all....They didn't wrap the tree because we only went about 10 miles and no faster than 30...They said it would be fine..I watered the dickens out of it last night and again this morning, and it looked a bit better if that is even possible or maybe I just really wanted it to :). Yes there is still green, even the stems the leaves are on are still bright green as many of them had just grown...So I'll keep my fingers crossed it is just the leaves with a problem...I'll move it to a shadier location tonight after I get off work and try that...And up the watering ..I do hope that helps the poor thing...As for how high it has been here only in the mid 80's thank goodness :) It is finally cooling down :) Again I thank you for the advice and will see what I can do. Off to a long day at work worrying about a poor helpless tree at home :)

Mid 80's isn't really that hot, when you said it was hot and dry I was thinking 100-ish. Still not a bad idea to put it in the shade, but it makes my root-cooking theory a little less likely.

it was actually in the 100's just the past 3 or 4 days have been normal...and we finally got rain today...of course it was because of tornadoes but it is rain!!! I had the guy from the nursery come look at it and he thinks it was the trip that just shocked the leaves...all the stems and the trunk are green if you scrape a bit off...he tried it at the top and near the bottom...he said to keep watering let the leaves fall and keep watering it he thinks it will come back...guess I'll see...thanks again for all the advice!

No disease, insects or herbicide damage. It's clear that the drying up happened quickly, which actually, is a good thing. 10 miles at 30mph should have been fine, unless the tree was already ready to wilt when you loaded it. My best guess is that it ran out of water once you got it home. Sometimes the "soil" that is used in tree and shrub container are a bit difficult to gauge for moisture. IMO, potted materials in holding status from nurseries always go in the shade even on 60-70 F days.

Your nursery guy is right though, it should come back fust fine.