Pumpkin vine with crunchy growing tip and sap - disease ID?

9 years ago

So at about the 10' mark, one of my Rouge Vif D'Etampes vines is starting to get weird. Most of the newest leaves on the main growing tip and recent side shoots are partially or completely appearing dull in color, dry and crunchy.

Partially affected leaves sort of pull apart at the dried areas when they grow, left with damage like this

The only fruit it's set so far aborted - not itself unusual - but it has some dried sap kind of residue coming from holes around its base. I had also noticed another spot of that sap at one of the messed up recent leaf nodes.

5 equidistant damage spots seems "too perfect" for insects and instead makes me wonder if it corresponds to the 5 petals of the flower. Did an autopsy to confirm no critters had burrowed inside.

This plant shares the immediate area with several others and I'm not noticing this issue elsewhere, nor even earlier on the same plant. The only difference I can think of is this one could be under more sun/heat stress due to its placement in my patch.

Can anyone identify this as a disease and should I remove the whole vine, or just avoid using it for crosses?

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Comments (3)

timester246
9 years ago
Wished I could help you. Been researching with not much luck.
Has lots of rain been happening?
Good luck, still looking here, as I just hand pollinated one female giant pumpkin bloom today. 7/7/17
Christian
9 years ago
Haven't you guys in Phoenix been getting baked by record heat wave.? When ever the temps get above 90degrees, I notice its really hard to get fruit to set. I have much better luck planting much earlier in the spring, or later in the fall so that they start producing when the temperature gets milder.
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sunnyvalley
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks for looking. Respectively - no not a drop of rain, and yeah it's been scorching. I started these plants in early May and they've mostly been really healthy. Fruit set as expected has been very low although I do have 2 so far.

After I made this post, I noticed tiny caterpillars on the new growth of every vine of this variety (interestingly not on any others), and I think they introduced some sort of disease. Recent leaves became discolored and all new growth past that point became gnarled and chlorotic. I ended up cutting off several feet of all the main vine ends and now thankfully I have secondary growth from farther back that seems to be growing healthy tissue. Still not sure what the disease or caterpillars were. For posterity:

Check often for critters, kids.