I planted a Japanese cherry tree in my front yard 5 years ago. It seemed to be fine until recently. For down south, we had a hard winter and we lost our roses and orange tree as well. But my sister saw my fb post about it last night and thought the tree was too established for the cold to get it and thought maybe it's a disease and i should leave it alone for awhile to see if it recovers. Problem is , we already bought another tree over the weekend (Green Giant Evergreen) to take it's place.

The weird thing is the Japanese Cherry has an extra root or something and it has a side growth that is growing around the main tree and it is fine. It's just the main tree.

Lowes said the Green Giant should be ok in the bucket for about a month and after that we needed to plant it or get a bigger bucket.

Is there anyway to know for sure - other than waiting a long time to see if the tree is really dead or not?

Thanks