Unlikely to be the sapsucker, more probably a disease like fireblight or a root disease fungus. I'd be inclined to get rid of it if it is almost completely dead, but be wary of planting anything else in the same position until the cause is known. Not a good idea to plant anything in the same place unless you know it is resistant to whatever caused the death / near-death of the Loquat. Can you post any photos? Resin

Mike, I had two 50 ft. lengths of drip hoses wound in, out and around the plants with mulch covering them - all throughout the garden in the veggie garden. The mulch was piled on 8 inches thick or thicker under and around them. I put covers over the tomatoes in late July through August. I have good well water, so no chlorine that can damage plants. Notwithstanding all that I did, when temps reached 110-120, everything just turned brown, and then blister beetles ate what was left. I had tall, dark green, beautiful corn plants with 2-3 huge ears on each plant, but upon checking them, they had few developed kernels. Total loss. I planted more than one hundred tomatoes (seven varieties), corn, beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, bell peppers, three types of hot peppers, Red bells, zucchini, and onions. Normally I get enough to can, freeze, eat fresh and sell at the Farmer's Market & Health Food stores and still have enough to donate to the Food Bank. Not last year. The only tomatoes I got were a handful from the plants I grew in large pots, but only a few. They were sure good though. Cherokee Purples were especially yummy and the Lemon Boys. I think I got about 20 tomatoes altogether. I got more than everyone else around here. Their plants kicked it in June and July. I did get some okra from the plants in the smaller, lower garden and a few pitifully small Early Girl tomatoes, and a pretty good harvest of Jalapenos in September when it cooled down a bit, but that was all. I put so much work into it and expense. But it was just too hot. It was like standing inside a furnace ever day. I lost several small trees, one large weeping willow and several Eponymous shrubs. And what the heat didn't kill, the voles did, chewing the roots off several of my roses. What a horrible year! Sorry to go on about it...

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I've staked all my new trees -- a necessity given the winds we have here. However, the other trees have enough trunk strength to stand pretty well on their own. I finally made a pvc frame for the loquat similar to what you suggested with four points, and loosely secured the tree to the top. I considered some pruning, but then thought that the more green growth for "horsepower", the more energy could be put into trunk development. When you say that staking can be a tree's worst enemy, are you saying that the tree may grow bigger than it would without staking, and then be prone to blowing over? Or is it the lack of swaying that strengthens woody tissue? Bruce

QUESTION: Today, we went out and cut off (as high up as we could reach with the extendable chain saw) any limbs on this severely damaged tree that are clearly dead, brittle and no new green shoots. There's still lots more dead branches higher up, but we don't do "saws up on ladders" at our age, and a pro will have to do the rest with a lift bucket. We fully understand we're likely going to lose an entire main trunk on this tree, if not lose the ENTIRE tree above ground. But for now, we're taking it out in stages, to see if there's any hope of saving it in some form or another. That said, I'm concerned about one limb about 5" inch diameter we decided to leave alone this morning. It has a number of clusters of new green shoots/leaves out on the ends of its remote branchings, but there is a 2' or so swath where the skin/bark is cracking (see photo below) where the thin bark is, in one place, actually peeling away from the branch. The inner limb tissue, as you can see below, is brown. Like I said, it is supporting new shoots and leaf clusters farther out on the limb just fine. Do you think I should do something proactive to manage this potential virus/insect potential entry site? Can I treat it with the black spray/gooey tar-like sealer I've used for years on tree cuts and tape that skin/bark maybe with duct tape to the limb so air and insects don't get in and kill off this limb? Or should we write off this limb and go ahead and remove it. Again, we are willing to resign ourselves to losing most above ground parts of this tree, if a slow death is what we are seeing (like the Tx. Mt. Laurel I lost, finally, despite some new shoots) Attaching a few pics of the bark cracking and the shape currently, after our cutting back this morning. The trimmed out limbs generated a 7' tall 10' wide pile of debris for pick-up Monday. City is really gonna love me, NOT. Haven't noticed signs of cracking bark on other limbs after a thorough inspection once this one was discovered, just this one location on a major limb visible at the lower left in the top photo, with said damage at the elbow bend in that trunk. Not sure if it cracked during on long after the actualy freezeing temps in February. What advice can you give me here? If it were your loquat, would you just top the tree so it will quit struggling to survive way up high, say perhaps cut it at the bottom electric line in the photo, hoping the tree will regrow anew off the clearly healthy roots? Please note, the bulk of the green visible in the ball of vegetative growth in the photo is actually a neighbor's tree right across the street, from this camera perspective. If photo is enlarged, only the bright lime green shoots are on MY tree. Or would you, at this 5 months out juncture, give up on saving this tree in its current iteration, now that is it showing serious bark damage and take down the main trunk at some level? If so, would you make that aggressive cut just ABOVE the fork, where the cracking seems to begin or BELOW the fork, leaving just the erect, bare trunk. Of course, we would thoroughly treat 8" cuts with a thick. This approach, although drastic, and aesthetically unsatisfying for a long time, would basically promote a brand new tree above ground growing off the well-established root system and main trunk. The ultimate shape on the resulting 'new tree' might not be so pretety, but perhaps with some creative pruning over the years, could once again be nearly oval in its form. My goal is for it to one day be the prolific fruiting tree it once was. I see the alternative approach not so appealing: letting it struggle another 5 months and maybe, put on a bit more new leaf growh, then eventually die a slow death.