The blackening is pretty consistent. There is much demand for the native due to the vogue for native planting yet growers don't seem much able to meet it. The best one for gardens here, to get a stem appearance like you are showing on a clean, attractive shrub is A. manzanita. Under retail outlet cultural regimes even some of the stock being offered of this may have some infestation showing. But as with so much other container-grown stock the main turnoff for me with plants being offered here that I have examined is terrible deformity of the roots.

Maybe Ian Barclay (Desert Northwest) can supply you with some good stock at some point sooner or later. Perhaps your best bet is take take and root cuttings of good, clean-looking wild plants and grow your own garden specimens. I rooted some in the mist house at Hopkins nursery when I worked there many years ago so I know it isn't that hard to root cuttings of A. columbiana.

When I looked for information on manzanita propagation on the internet some years ago I got hits from some University of California propagation experiment results indicating heavy doses of fungicides were the critical factor with these.

Yes, a superior hairy manzanita is one of my many ongoing projects. Maybe I'll have something to show for it in a few years if the elk stop eating my plants. Not the easiest thing to grow in containers. The amount of leaf spotting one sees depends quite a bit on the time of year. For the most part they look great in summer and terrible by late winter.

I was given a plant a number of years ago. No name with it. It could use some pruning to show more of the trunk so as to look like a miniature Madrona. I could also pick up after myself when I prune the Cyptomerias.
Here's a picture.

{{gwi:1082059}}

botann, that's looking pretty nice! Do you have problems with black leaf spotting on yours?

Of the nine A. columbiana I brought home from the plant salvage, one died right away, two look like they're dying now, and six are doing really well at this point. It's been about two months. I also got nine sizeable Rhododendron macrophyllum and seven of them are flourishing.

No problem with black leaf spotting....so far. My plant is in full sun.