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Fruit & Orchards

Cherry- Rows of Holes on Trunk & Branches

17 years ago

HI, I inherited 3 lovely cherry trees when I bought my home. The largest is about 35 feet high and blooms but has no edible fruit. It has developed, no it is riddled with, horizontal rows of holes, each about 1/8 to 1/4 inch in diameter. The holes go through the bark to the first layer of wood. What is causing this? How can I treat it? Can the tree be saved? Thanks.

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Comments (4)

jellyman
17 years ago
ctobeyk:

The regular rows of holes you see on your cherry tree were left by woodpeckers. The birds, I mean, for which there is no known treatment.

If you define this as a problem, the woodpeckers are more of a symptom than a cause. They are there hunting down small crawly creatures that live under the bark surface of your tree, and the creatures are there because they have found necrotic wood or bark, which is what they eat. Cherry trees of all types, whether fruiting or decorative, have a finite lifespan, and an indication that an individual tree is on the downward slope of this curve is the mulitiplication of little creatures living under the bark. A tree that is 35 feet high is probably at least 25 years old, which is when many cherry trees begin to decline. This decline, however, is often spread over many years, and does not mean that your tree is imminently doomed.

Cherry trees are subject to various forms of bacterial canker, which often shows up as lumps of hardened sap that the infection point, followed by the death of progressively larger twigs and branches. You can try to slow the process by timely pruning of infected or dead branches, and spraying the tree with a strong fungicide such as copper, but these are delaying tactics. And I don't know how you would effectively spray a tree 35 feet tall.

On the other hand, if your tree shows no signs of distress other than the rows of woodpecker holes, it may not be necessary to do anything.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
snider1946
17 years ago
It sounds like the holes of a yellow bellied sapsucker (which is kind of woodpecker). They drill them and then come back to drink the sap.It doesn't mean there are a lot of grubs etc. in the bark. I don't think they do any harm.

Robert
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larmil
17 years ago
This is easy its caused by a woodpecker called the Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker, he drills the holes then comes back later to sip the sap. Larry [ PS. they won't hurt the tree.]
salmon1an
17 years ago
I agree that the holes are probably caused by the Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker. I don't agree that they won't hurt the tree. I have lost trees to them (Mountain ash, maple and apple trees). The trees didn't die right away - some took several years from repeated drilling over time.

There are control options, some more effective than others.

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