ReconJack said: I thinking now it could be some bad mulch...
That makes sense...
I spread some mulch over someone's garden... Some of that dyed crap they picked up at a landscape supply center...
And... while it didn't really seem to affect the existing plants... when I scraped some of it away before sowing some poppy seeds last autumn... the seeds failed...
I saw some come up in the lawn... just not in the flower bed!
Don't know what they're treating that commercial mulch with... but it ain't good.
But, yeah... your cuttings look like a possible herbicide drift issue.