Surrey, United Kingdom

A customer of mine has a beautiful Japanese Maple which has been healthy throughout last year. But this spring it became noticeable that a number of new top stems have died back. I've now cut these back to main branches. I've no idea what killed them and we haven't had that cold a winter to cause that amount of dieback. New growth has already started lower down the main stem, and at the moment that looks healthy and vigorous. But I'm wondering whether the symptoms could be early signs of verticillium wilt although there's no sign of the new growth wilting so far?

I don't know much about Japanese Maples but recently learned that vw is the main threat to growing them successfully.

• 17 Apr, 2015