Landscape and Nursery - Verticillium Wilt

Verticillium wilt can be a problem in certain landscape plants, especially maples. The following are lists of plants that are susceptible and resistant to Verticillium wilt.

Many woody plant species are susceptible to Verticillium wilt. In Delaware, we see this disease most often on maple and tulip trees. Plants that are immune or somewhat resistant to Verticillium wilt are those that limit the spread of the pathogen in the plant. These species include all gymnosperms (needled evergreens) and all monocots (grasses, sedges, rushes, lilies).

Susceptible to Verticillium: ash, azalea, boxwood, brambles, buckeye, catalpa, cherry and other stone fruits, Kentucky coffee tree, currant and gooseberry, elm, golden-rain tree, hibiscus, honeysuckle, horse-chestnut, India-hawthorn, lilac, black locust, magnolia, maple, Russian olive, osage orange, osmanthus, Japanese pagoda tree, peony, persimmon, photinia, privet, redbud, rose, sassafras, serviceberry, smoke tree, spirea, sumac, tree-of-heaven, tulip tree, viburnum, wiegela, and yellowwood

Resistant to Verticillium apple and crabapple, beech, birch, boxwood, butternut, dogwood, eucalyptus, firethorn, hackberry, hawthorn, hickory, holly, Katsura tree, linden, honey locust, mountain ash, mulberry, oak, oleander, pawpaw, pear, pecan, plane tree and sycamore, poplar, quince and flowering quince, rhododendron, sweet gum, walnut, willow, and Japanese zelkova.

Information from Ann B. Gould, Ph.D., Specialist in Plant Pathology, Rutgers University.