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Are my leland cypress' dying?

14 years ago

I live in Delaware and we've had 3 heavy snow storms and a lot of rain...not usual for the area. We have about 30 very large leland cypress and the branches on every one are starting to turn brown. Just random areas on the trees. It starts at the tips. Mine and all the others in the neighborhood are looking the same. Is it caused by the weather? What can I do? I'm so worried they are dying.

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Comments (6)

pineresin
14 years ago
Check for Seiridium canker and bagworms, Leyland Cypress is susceptible to both.

Resin

PS spellcheck: Leyland
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
14 years ago
i dont understand why a bunch of what you describe as LARGE trees.. would just up and die based on some ambient rain ...

one would suspect.. that over their life span .. they would have encountered such before..

hence the suggestion of a disease.. but even that is suspect on some level.. because it usually doenst involve every tree in the area ... all at once.. but weirder things have happened..

a picture or 3 would sure help us speculate

ken
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I'll update on the status. Just took a photo although it's getting dark out: Right now somewhat of a proof of concept test I have 3 rows planted. Row 1 is about a foot behind the top of the wall, Row 2 is in the center of the bed, and Row 3 is all the way in the back. Things are just leafing out now so it's kinda hard to see. I'll start with Row 2 in center. I have 5 diervilla sessifolia "butterfly" plants spaced about 4' OC on the right side (foreground in this pic), and I have 5 callicarpa americana on the left side of wall spaced the same. In Row 1 in front of these, I have 3 butterfly bush (milkweed), 3 bushy St. John's wort, and 3 New Jersey tea plants, spaced basically splitting the plants in Row 2. along the rear right in front of the fence, I have a line of bushy St. John's wort (hypericum prolificum). This was planted bare root in oct 2014 and has basically been ignored. It is not dead, and they are bigger than when planted... but they are definitely not big and thick enough to block any view. Here's one of those for example: I'll have to wait and see what they do over the next couple months as everything leafs out. They did flower last year, so maybe there is hope? Everything is leaning towards the sun- towards the wall. However from the yard this isn't really noticeable. Thoughts? Again my only goal is to block the view of the chain link fence.
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pineresin
14 years ago
"hence the suggestion of a disease.. but even that is suspect on some level.. because it usually doenst involve every tree in the area ... all at once"

Hi Ken - it can in this case, because they're all genetically identical clones. A pest or disease which likes one will like them all equally, and go through the whole lot like a hot knife through butter. The reason why planting lots of identical items is always a bad idea.

Resin
scotjute Z8
14 years ago
My wife has some of these planted near Waco. Every year scattered branches just up and die. Probably 1 or 2 per tree (these are about 18' tall). I don't even think anything about it, just part of the wonderful fun of growing Leylands: trim off miscellaneous dead branches, have friends and family over for bagworm picking parties, etc.
ajw2002
Original Author
14 years ago
The trees are about 25' tall, some maybe taller. We had 3 snowstorms (in a 4 week timespan) that each was atleast 1 foot of snow from each storm, weeks of melting snow then rain..rain..rain. It's been fun. I think it is a reasonable question to suspect the weather having something to do with whatever is going on.
Thanks everyone..oh and we had the pleasure of bag worms 2 years ago...imagine thirty 25' trees each full of bagworms. We almost lost one tree but we picked off as many bagworms as possible which saved the tree. Thanks again.
kirkpeoples_yahoo_com
13 years ago
I have leland cypress that are newly planted about 6 weeks .They are about 13 and half foot tall.I bought them from a nearby tree farm .I have started to notice that from the center out ,some of the foliage has started to turn yellow .My concern is that the trees are dying .

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