Euonymus Leaves brown defoliating shriveling

Please Help! I need help figuring out what's going on with my Chollipo Euonymus. I have 15 of them in my backyard, and about a month ago, one of them started having problems, and now they all are. The problem seems to start as having leaf buds that turn brown and don't open. Then many of the leaves on the plant start browning and falling off. New leaves that are trying to unfurl are shriveling up. The original euonymus that first had the problem looks bad now (in image). I never saw any bugs or scale on it (I googled scale to see what it looks like). Now many of the other euonymus are starting to show the same early signs of trouble. I do see some spider webs on some of the other euonymus and I don't know if that's related or not, as the spider webs don't seem to be visible on the euonymus that are doing the worse, but maybe the bugs have moved on to the healthier euonymus and are getting ready to inflict more damage. The euonymus are planted on a slope in mostly sun in clay soil that was lightly amended with compost at planting time (planted June 2008). We have had a cool wet spring here in Richmond, Virginia, zone 7, and then the past few days have been in the 90s. I have drip irrigation for the euonymus but have only turned it on twice because of all the rain we had this spring. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Jhart

Thumbnail by jhart

Thank you for the links, ecrane3. I checked them out, and then examined my euonymus again. There are no signs of scale. However, I did notice black spots on the underside of affected leaves. I also took a closer look at the spider web and saw a small black spider with one white spot on each side of it. The euonymus could be having 2 problems--whatever is causing the black spots, and then also the spider, or it could be the same problem. The spider is so tiny, I can't get a good photo of it.

Dublin, CA(Zone 9a)

You know, I actually posted those links on the wrong thread--I had been here and seen yours and then seen another one about horticultural oils to control euonymus scale, so I went away to look up references and when I came back I saw the euonymus in your subject line and thought that was the thread I meant to reply on. Sorry!

I wouldn't worry about the spider--they are good to have around because they eat bad bugs. Spider mites can be a problem for plants but they are much tinier and are reddish brown so that doesn't sound like what you have.

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