where are you???

looks like a bug.. of which i am blanking.. cuz its winter.. lol ...

obviously.. a fungicide will not help with a bug ...

nor will it have any effect on scale ...

as neither are a fungus ...

i can not ID the plant .... maybe someone else can on this pic ... if they cant.... we need a better pic ...

ken

best guess: https://www.google.com/search?q=mealy+bug&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9mrTjhebJAhXJ_R4KHYf7AA0Q_AUICCgC&biw=926&bih=745&dpr=0.9

East TN - here is a pic of the shrub. (Taken through a window, so pardon the glare.) I don't think it's a fungus.....thank you! There are rhododendrons on each side that are totally unaffected.

That is a very serious infestation of a type of scale insect, Barkley. Looks like a peach scale, to me, a very common pest of a wide range of plants. The insects have nothing to do with the die-back we see in your plant; that's another story altogether.

I believe the plant to be a Prunus laurocerasus of one kind or another. Some of the common cultivars are quite prone to diseases. P. l. "Otto Luyken" or "Schipkaensis" are both popular landscape plants in spite of their problems.

The holly had a different kind of scale insect, in all likelihood. Some scale species excrete large volumes of 'recycled' plant sap called honeydew. The sweet honeydew coats the leaves and stems and a black mold will often begin to grow on the substance. It feeds solely on the sugars of the honeydew NOT on your plant.

The only way to get rid of and prevent the black sooty mold, which is what it is called, is to get rid of the scale insects.

get rid of the plant... its not worth the exposure to the chemicals ... nor the time invested if you went the oil route ...

just be done with it...

ken

Thank you so much, Rhino_1....can you tell me why the plant is dying,then?