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Help! Large tree branches are dead!

11 years ago

I've lived here for 5 years and planted around the house are 3 of these beautiful trees. Two grow like wildfire...one does not.

The one that doesn't has large chunks of the branches die and then anything above that section will die. In some areas the tree can recover by growing a "runner" up the dead wood but sometimes the dead section is more than the tree can handle.

PLEASE help me save this beautiful tree.

Thanks,

Jason

In the first picture I'm showing a branch that is about to completely die:

[IMG]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e48/vdubspeed16vT/deadtree1.jpg[/IMG]

This picture shows the tree and the many dead sections:

[IMG]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e48/vdubspeed16vT/deadtree2.jpg[/IMG]

And finally...I cut this section last weekend. You can see the tree is 95% dead from this cut. Only the one section in the foreground was alive. The entire foliage fell off in one week of going yellow:(

[IMG]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e48/vdubspeed16vT/deadtree3.jpg[/IMG]

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Comments (5)

vdubspeed
Original Author
11 years ago
Here's the same picture from above. I'm new to this forum so please excuse my amateur use of this forum.
bengz6westmd
11 years ago
Chinese elm.

Mine has gotten some similar-looking lesions from what I guessed were symptoms of the disease elm yellows (which is rampant here). Might be what yours has, but not sure.

Not much to do except remove the dead limbs & hope it can recover...
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bengz6westmd
11 years ago
Interesting that it looks like there was scar tissue forming even above the point of girdling. Perhaps there's a sliver of inner bark connecting the two points behind the stem...

My Chinese elm overcame & healed its lesions before they completely girdled any branches. But they were nasty-looking.
Iris GW
11 years ago
Give up on the one and plant something native to replace it. The birds and butterflies will thank you for it.
saccharum
11 years ago
I would suspect that this is squirrel damage. Especially in the summer, they will frequently gnaw off bark in patches and eat the inner bark, sometimes girdling branches.

It's actually pretty common with girdling to see the tissue continue to grow (or even be exaggerated) just above the damaged area until the stem dies. The sapwood may continue to be conductive for a while, and the sugars from the leaves on that limb don't have anywhere else to go...

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