You are welcome Haley! Jan if you haven't tried Kaempferias, you NEED to! I only have one so far and it is so slow to break dormancy. I keep wanting to use that empty space for something else. I'm going to get some more but my budget is busted for plants right now. They are beautiful low growing plants. On my bananas I have overwintered Manzano and Ice Cream every yr with no protection. Have lost a heck of a lot more that DIDN'T overwinter. Sorry to highjack your thread telly, now you have all this information that you have no need for! LOL!

Now, in July 2021, my 7 ft. tall loquat that fruited for the first time last year (thrilling!) has suddenly dying leaves that show no culprit. Before I get into all that... I found this thread and realize that I had never thought about "tree worms", as bluesky7 above wrote about. (Google "worm in tree trunk" images if you have a strong stomach. For me, while snakes are at the high end of my nobility scale, giant worms are at the bottom!) Question: Are worms (or a single worm - ugh!) a reasonable possibility in my loquat tree planted in sunny, sandy (fast-draining), hot soil?

Oh no! I visited your post last night and thought about the Sri Lanka Beetle that has caused significant leaf damage on some of my ornamentals, but I don't have a Loquat or a HKO. Our county extension agent recommended Sevin but said to change pesticides on your next attack because Sri Lanka Beetles quickly grow immune to whatever you spray on them. I called a lawn service to spray because there was no way I could get to the tops of Tibouchinas or Powder Puff. A week later, I'm spotting those critters down low, like on african iris. This year I've squished hundreds of them. Oh, and they're mating now. Thanks for posting the link, Oldflorida. Good luck with your Orchid Tree and Loquat. You stated before that you have a pesticide free yard: that is really great, so I know this has to be heart wrenching for you. Good luck.

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.