Any pesticides or herbicides used recently? Not even necessarily directly ON the tree? The curling leaves look a lot like one time a couple years back when I spot-treated some weedy areas with 2,4D. A popup rainshower that afternoon washed the herbicide to the roots of some nearby plants and made the leaves freakishly curled. Looked like leafy arthritis.

Somebody smarter than me will probably have something more useful to say, but the curling leaves caught my attention.

Not by us, but a neighbouring farmer has just sprayed docs in an adjacent field. However, nothing else has been affected, neither the plants in the surrounding bed or the other trees in the garden (and there are quite a few!)

Another photo if will help

And another

....and one final one!

many of us would call that 'topping' of the tree...

not pollarding ..

where are you .. any chance of a freeze after leaf out

why was this done

and when was the tree hit by lightening???

and with that new gate.. was new driveway put in???? any recent construction...

ken

We didn't know the tree had been hit by lightening! The pic of the trunk shows where a large piece of bark has come away.

We're in N Devon and the tree was pollarded on recommendation of a tree surgeon after we enquired about thinning the tree out as several branches were overhanging a neighbours drive and very adjacent to telephone wires etc. As I said before, after it was carried out the new branches sprouted quickly with healthy leaf, and it began to leaf up well again this year until just recently.

No other works have been done, the gates have just been replaced.

Here's a pic before the pollarding...

...and one after it was completed

Timmy
Sorry to say, but your "tree surgeon" is what I call "a monkey with a chainsaw". Anyone that actually understood what they were doing would not make this recommendation. The wounds are so large, that rot is certain to set in even if your current problem goes away. This rot will eventually require removal, lest it fall on something (like the car) during a storm. The "monkey with the chainsaw" was making themselves future work with the removal of the tree. And for future reference, this treatment will kill many species out right. Saw this done to a very large healthy, fabulous Sugar Maple locally. DEAD was the result. Still standing after 3-4 years like they keep expecting it to come back. Same with a 36" diameter Loblolly Pine.

Plant yourself a replacement of some sort appropriate for your area, wherever that is. N Devon tells us nothing as to your location.

Oh, and Ken is right. That IS NOT pollarding. That is topping, and not a wise thing to do.

Arktrees

This post was edited by arktrees on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 16:14

That is horrible. He DESTROYED your tree. I'm a fan of weeping willows, so this really ticks me off.

Get someone to cut it down, and go buy another one to put in its place.

North Devon tells me exactly where the OP is but mention that they were in the UK at the outset would have been useful. Check out Willow anthracnose and see if that is what your tree has.

Weeping willows aren't pollarded anyway. If that tree had been pollarded it would have been cut off at the first crotch. Pollarding was traditionally practised to obtain long straight poles or withies. Weeping willow is no use for that. However, they grow so fast and are so tough in our climate I wouldn't be surprised if yours recovers and looks fine in few years. I very much doubt it will die. And I don't think it has been struck by lightning, I think that was Ken's humour. Anyway, lightning strikes are not that common here. It looks a mess now but I think it will be o.k. But there will always be a problem with the wires.

I'm also suspecting several of the diseases weeping willows are commonly susceptible to in the UK. If it is anthracnose, the stems will ultimately show some lesions from it, and those leaves who succumb should shed off. There is really no effective treatment for it. Sometimes diseases are there showing no symptoms until the tree is stressed out and then they flare up. The Royal Horticultural Society has some good literature out there about willow disorders. Lovely property btw.

Firstly, thank you for your replies. Secondly, apologies for not adding my location, I'm sorry if this has caused some upset but I was not aware how to do it or its importance. Hopefully that is now remedied.

Now onto my willow. The tree surgeon who treated my tree (who was recommended by several local people and has a good reputation) said that you could be very severe with the willow as it was very hardy and would grow again in no time, but in a more manageable state. Is this not correct?

Also, if this is Willow Anthracnose, would that also be the reason for the quite large sections of trunk where the bark is peeling away from?

Tim,
There are several problems with cutting a tree like that. The new branches will be weakly attached. The enormous wounds will be difficult for any tree to close before rot sets in. The tree is extremely stressed and is much more susceptible to a variety of diseases (probable a contributing factor in the current problem). The tree will send out shoots where ever it can, compounding the weak attachment. Then it is just plain freaking ugly, and will be for some time at best. My assessment of "monkey with a chainsaw" has not changed. Of course the choice of what to do with it is yours. Butchered would be the word I would use, and removal would be the other word I would use. JMHO

As for location, I was not upset, I was making the point that using local jargon tells most nothing. Any more so that if I said I lived in Washington County without any other info would not tell you anything (there are MANY Washington Counties in the US). But if I tell you Washington County Arkansas, then you would have a fair chance to know that I was in the US state of Arkansas, though you probable would not know where Washington County is in Arkansas. Flora_UK knows the UK, good for them, but I have no reason to know geography of the UK beyond the basics, and I'm relatively good with geography as a whole. Most people are not so great with geography, therefore having even less chance to know.

As for the apparent disease, I don't know anything about that one. Good luck to you.

Arktrees

This post was edited by arktrees on Tue, Jun 11, 13 at 9:53

Tim - The weakness of attachment is not of so much concern here as in much of the US, so I wouldn't worry about it. We have little in the way of really extreme winds, not much snow load and no ice load to contend with so trees can be much more idiosyncratic in their structure than would be ideal in N America. Basically it just wasn't a very good spot to plant a weeping willow in the first place. But now it's there I'd give it a year or two before making a decision.

I suspect the bark issue might just be physical trauma from the surgery where it may have been loosened with the larger limbs coming down. Perhaps not, some trees just do that from environmental causes with no apparent reason. My g'son (age three) just peeled off a loosened plaque from my very healthy Korean catalpa yesterday. It just came off in a sheet and I stifled the impulse to have a hissy fit. This happens on very old trees.

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd post a follow up to this. It would appear that the tree has been attacked by some kind of boring beetle (not sure of the name). Our local tree preservation officer at the Council had a look and spotted some bore holes and sawdust at the base of the tree, and he said that it was probably a combination of this, the hard "pruning" of the tree, and it's age. We've found out that it's around 30 yrs old, and he reckoned that it's not uncommon for them to just die off at around that age.

Really sad, but we're now having to think of what to replace it with. Any ideas?