To be honest it looks a lot like some of the invasives I have used Roundup on when they try to resprout. Any chance of drift from someone spraying herbicide nearby, either last year or this year?

Thank you for your comments- I am starting to think it is a Roundup injury- I have my bird feeders off to the side of my QF, and I sprayed around that area last fall because a lot of the seed was sprouting. I did some research on HCMV virus that can cause leaf deformities, but since my QFs are a paniculata, I don't think that is the issue. Do you all think the plant will recover?

That is classic herbicide damage! And yes, unless sprayed directly (and often repeatedly), most woody plants will recover in time.

Thanks so much!

I will echo Luis's comment about size - yours are really too close together, so this might be an opportunity to move one or more. I have a regular QF that started as a small rooted twig, and 4 years later it was 5' tall and wide. It seems to have pretty much settled in at 6' in all directions or perhaps a hair more. When I've seen various H. paniculatas that have been pruned, they grow most of the way back to full size in one season, so to my mind it really isn't a plant that one can readily control size on via pruning. It's one of my favorite plants, blooming for a full 4 months starting white just before Independence Day, and in August beginning a slow color change which ends in early September as a bright cherry pink that lasts until a hard frost, usually late October here. I also grow clematis on mine, so it's a shrub with a lot of bang for the buck! I leave the dried flower heads on as ornaments in the winter, removing them most years around now.

Next time on the bird seed, you might consider just pulling them or chopping them off down at ground level when young with old-fashioned wooden handled hedge clippers if they are dense. I tend to reserve Glysophate (generic RU) for things I can't easily remove via other methods, such as poison ivy or invasive shrubs such as Asian honeysuckles, buckthorn, or barberry (of which I have literally thousands). Where possible I drip undiluted herbicide on cut stumps since it is unfortunately easy to hit plants I don't want to damage with overspray. If spray is needed, a bag temporarily over the plant you want to protect may help, and set the sprayer for large drop size since it will land more where you want it with less drift.

Oh, oh. How bad was it that you had to use Round Up on the sprouting seeds? I switched to seeds without shells and it seems to have helped. Still get some growth but the number has gone down.

If you did spray Round Up then it should recover but look puny for a while. I am surprised the others did not get zapped a little. A neighbor's plant got hit when her neighbor sprayed on the other side of her fence and the vapors then traveled to her plant so,,, one has to be careful.