Now I am farely confident these guys are supposed to be in sunny environments, but all my new growth wilts in the sun, it normally springs back later, right now it's wilting bad though.

I have read that this is rather normal when it comes to the new growth, but since I am a container grower, I don't know how you guys handle this when you grow in ground. For those that live in warm climates, does all your new growth wilt everytime it's in the sun?? Just seems strange to me.....

Anyways, not worried, but get sad when it's all droopy.

It is quite common with most plants. It is called midday water stress. We used to measure leaf water potential various times of the day. When the root system cannot keep up with evaporative demand, the plant's leaves droop or wilt as a safety reaction. Sometimes, it is leaf rolling.

The rolling of the leaves makes it absorb less sunlight and increased roughness coefficient for better sensible heat transfer to help cool off the plant.

In a way, drooping behaves the same way also, when the leaves droop, its angle become more vertical and thus become more oblique when absorbing sunlight, thus reducing radiation load, also the roughness coefficient increases, and this facilitates heat transfer from leaves to air.

Plants are smart!

~Derek

All that Joe say is certainly true. However, it could also be from poor root structure or actual root damage, usually caused by over watering, or from high soluble salts in the soil. - Millet

Yes, that's right. Trees wilt as a natural reaction to water or heat stress. If they wilt when they're not normally supposed to under the given conditions, something else might not be normal, and it could be those things that Millet has pointed out.

well, given that it springs back everytime, it must be it's safety mechanism, right? I definately don't overwater.

I've had the same thing but with old leaves as well. It just seems to be on this one Lime that seems to react to anything going. Oranges and lemons are fine.

Both old and new spring back to normal when the sun goes and temperature cools in the evening and at night.

Mine hasn't been overwatered either.

Thanks for asking the question as I was thinking of doing the same although I wasn't sure if the new leaves were just aclimatising after being taken out of the greenhouse.

The leaves on my tree mentioned in the last post are now wilting whether it's very sunny or not and also not recovering overnight as they were doing before. This is happening to old and new leaves. The new leaves are still light green after approx a month (I've got a Verna Lemon that also has light green and veiny new leaves) Also got loads of tiny fruits on it.

This tree has had fertilzers with every watering and I've been very careful not to overwater.

The soil in the container is still damp from 2 inches downwards and misting the leaves in the evening has also not stopped the wilting.

30 degrees C and sunny forecast here for next few days, so should I water as this has stopped wilting before and may be I should use a slightly different fertilizer I have which has slightly different strenghs of nutrients in it.

Or what could be another cause?

Thanks

Ive got an idea!

Millet was talking about wrapping containers before- is your container black? if so, it might be getting too hot and you need to wrap it with aluminium foil or put it inside a slightly larger lighter colored planter!

It's in a plastic pot which is black. The plastic pot is then in a larger terracotta pot with plenty of air all around. The main reason for this was 'show' but more to do with making it lighter to move depending on conditions and into a greenhouse for the winters.

It's just strange that this is the only tree doing this, my others are also kept the same as above and are fine. This is the only Lime I have and does seem to be the one that gives me problems.

I think I might have read that terracotta pots can get too hot, but might be wrong.

Thanks

Sorry, forgot to say it only gets full sun until about 2pm and that's in Mid summer.

When not in peak summer I do move my trees around so that they get at least 5 hours Sun (that's if there is any over here of course!!)

One of my 8 citrus trees was suffering from 'afternoon' wilt. The wilt has been getting progressively worse for about a month.

Below is the problem tree, a moro orange. The root stock is long forgotten. I've had the tree for 2.5 years. The picture on the left was taken in mid May. The picture on the right was taken July 1st. The tree is actually looking better than usual for late afternoon. Since I was home, I watered in mid afternoon, a few hours before taking the picture. On days that I am at work, the tree has been far more wilted.


I'm in north Texas. The average afternoon temperature has been 95 degrees. Of my 8 trees, this is the only one with a 'problem'. They all get between .5 to 1 gal every day. Every couple of weeks, I flush the pot with 2.5 gal of water.

I decided that the tree must have lost all its 'deep' root system. All that seemed to have an impact was the top few inches of soil. The pot had been buried during the winter to say warm, and left in the ground because I was lazy and didn't see a good reason to pull it up. To repot it, I needed to pull the pot out of the ground.

I was surprised to find a well developed root system had grown out of the pot and into the surrounding soil. The follwoing pictures show the pot with broken roots immediately after I pulled the pot from the ground. There was probably 1/2 a cubic foot of root material left in the hole.



The surrounding soil was pure sand and bone dry. Since I was surprised to discover so much root mass outside the pot, I've postponed the 'repotting' exercise. 2 other trees were 'in the ground', so I pull them up. Neither was exhibiting 'afternoon wilt'. Both tree had developed some 'in ground' roots, but neither had anywhere as much as the moro.

Obviously, there are problems comparing a wilt problem in Texas to wilting on a tree in the UK

Mark

[update Aug 4, 2006]

The tree is now doing fine. Pulling the tree out of the ground and removing all the roots external to the container did the trick. The afternoon wilting immediately became less pronounced and has now vanished.

Mark,

I've always been told to let the soil for container citrus to almost completely dry out, before each watering. The test is to check the top 3 inches of soil. If this is completely dry, then it's time to water. I think it's best to water when the sun has goes down as well.

What I also do is stick a 10 inch wooden skewer (like the ones used for kebabs) into the pot for 1 - 2 hours. If it comes out wet or damp, I don't water and test again the next day. Only if the top 3 inches is dry and the skewer comes out moist do I water. This may vary if the leaves have wilted and I may water a bit before the above happens.

Having said all that, the tree I mention above wasn't as dry as the criteria above and was still quite damp 3 inches down but the leaves were wiliting and stayed that way. They weren't as wilted as yours but not far off.

I decided to water it Friday evening, the leaves recovered overnight and we've had 90 degrees and Sun all weekend (which doesn't happen that often here!!) The leaves didn't wilt again over the weekend. It's 90 here today and tomorrow so I'll see what happens.

It's a Tahiti Lime, so may be this one needs to be kept wetter over the summer. It's a bit of a nightmare knowing when to water these things isn't it!?

It sounds as though you may be ok if the roots are ok. I'm a bit of a novice at Citrus growing, so learning all the time with a bit of trial and error.
But some of the people on here may be able to help you with any other tips and advice.

Hope you get on alright.

Nick

Hello!

Just to let everyone know, it's hot hot hot up here in montreal, Quebec, but I uped my watering frequency, and I haven't had the problem since. I to have recently adopted the skewer trick that Patty mention a while back, and although it's still new, I'm liking it.


Mark, I hope you moro perks ups, mine also didn't wilt nearly as much as yours when I started this thread.