Buddleia, also known as Butterfly Bush, has beautiful brightly coloured scented flowers and is often a beloved specimen shrub in UK gardens. As they grow, the young leaves sometimes develop small yellow spots, and become distorted and twisted.
These mottled yellow-green spotted, misshapen leaves look alarming and trigger worries that a virus infection or herbicide damage is killing the plant.
Have you spotted misshapen leaves with yellow-green patches on your buddleia? In this video I show you how to identify these unusual diseased looking leaves on your buddleia.
I then show you the tiny insects, the aphids, feeding on the leaves and causing the adverse reaction of virus-like symptoms on the buddleia leaves.
Don’t panic and destroy your buddleia plant if you see these interesting symptoms, it’s not caused by a virus or herbicide damage. The leaves are temporarily unsightly but will not cause long-term damage or kill your buddleia plant.
Timestamps:
0:00: Intro
0:24: Pro-tip to avoid buddleia self-seeding
0:44: The symptoms
1:10: Bonus colourful cutie caterpillar
1:22: More concerning symptoms
1:46: Identifying aphids on the buddleia plant
2:33: What to do about the aphids
3:01: Enjoying your buddleia plant
I hope you find this video speedy and helpful!
