Maybe sunscald and burn on the trunk and it got infected ?

It was a poor time to plant trees. Best time is right after leaf drop in autumn.

This post was edited by dbarron on Wed, Aug 27, 14 at 8:21

Norma,

I agree it might be sunscald on the tree trunk. Often, when you purchase containerized trees, they've been kept in a location where they have partial shade and then they suffer when abruptly transplanted into a situation where they are exposed to a lot of intense summer sunlight. Sometimes the containerized trees are grown in high tunnels with shade cloth that blocks some of the sunlight, and sometimes they are grown outdoors but in closely-spaced rows in containers placed pretty close to one another so that they help shade one another. Young bark that hasn't been exposed to intense sunlight and heat has a hard time adjusting to it. Some horticulturalists recommend wrapping the young tree trunks with a wrap made just for that purpose for the first year or two in order to protect the trunks, but others don't recommend that.

Trees will suffer less problems after being transplanted if you plant them while they are dormant, which in our climate is roughly November through February depending on what part of OK you're in. That sort of planting gives them time to adjust to being transplanted and to make some good root growth before they also have to deal with increasingly hot temperatures and intense sunlight.

With red oaks, there are various things that your tree's symptoms could indicate if it is not sunscald, but I'm inclined to think it is indeed sunscald. The sunburning of the bark can cause the splits in the wood and then you get the sap oozing out. The trunk damage then leads to the foliar problems because the tree's vacular system is affected by the damage. If you look at the spots where the sap is oozing out of the trunk, look closely to see if you see more or less straight splits in the trunk or if you see rows of holes. Sometimes borers will bore holes into young oak trees and then sap oozes out of those holes.

With the withered, drying, dropping leaves, it could merely be transplant shock, but could have other causes---and not just sunscald, but something else----a pest, a disease, etc. If your soil drains poorly and you've had a great deal of rain this summer, that might be the issue. Red oaks like well-drained soil.

I lived in Texas my entire life until moving here in 1999, and in Texas the red oaks have suffered for several decades now from a fungal disease called oak wilt. Once a tree is infected with it, saving the tree is almost impossible (and it is very costly to even attempt to save the tree). I haven't heard of oak wilt being a pernicious problem here in OK like it is in TX, but since the climate is about the same in these two states, I think it certainly is possible we do have oak wilt here in OK.

We have transplanted at least a dozen Shumard Red Oaks up out of our low-lying woodland adjacent to a creek up to the higher ground where the house was built, and they all have grown well and are beautiful. However, we moved them while they were dormant and we moved them while they were tiny saplings. When we moved them, they were 8-18" tall and the rootballs we dug for them were about as deep as the saplings were tall. That is very important----when you buy a containerized tree, the roots within the container (and this is true whether you buy it in a 5-gallon, 25, gallon, 50 gallon, etc.) were not nearly as big as what a tree that size actually needs, so the trees will struggle anyhow to put out enough new roots to support the tree after it is transplanted. Expecting a tree to be able to tolerate being transplanted in the heat of June is a lot to ask of a tree that is starting out with more top growth than its roots can support even in the best of conditions.

I hope the company from whom you purchased the trees has at least a 1-year guarantee and that they will replace the tree if it dies. I'm not saying your tree is dying---maybe it only has transplant shock and maybe it will recover and be fine, and the same is true if it is sunscald---it can recover. However, maybe the tree won't recover and, if that is the case, they ought to replace it.

With trees, transplant shock can show up any time during the first year or so after the tree is transplanted, and transplant shock will not necessarily cause a tree to die. However, some trees are so weakened from a severe case of it that they never really do well and they die sometime during the next few years.

I hope you'll keep us posted on what the company tells you and on what action they take.

Dawn