Oh no! I am surprised as well that your loquat tree appears to be dead. There is a very large, very old one across the street from me. I had noticed a lot of brown leaves on it. Just went out and looked again and while there are about half the leaves brown it still has some green ones.

Yours still may return from the roots, ya' think? With a good root system in place it may grow back quickly, but it will want to be multi trunked. You can select one or several.

It will be interesting to see what it does. Keep us posted.

Buttoni, what was your lowest temperature? Ours in San Antonio was officially 9 degrees, but my house is in a valley where it typically gets a little lower temps than a few blocks uphill.

We had freezing or below temps for 107.5 hours straight.

Buttoni, I hope your tree makes it! My three loquats right now are Bad, Worse and Worst so I'm also worried they're dead or dying. Oldest is 21 yrs old, taller than the house and youngest 11 yrs, abt. 10 ft tall so very well established.

All three have been through other winters when we got down to around 10°F.

But I'm in far NW Austin and this time everything was encased in ice on February 11th, then endured 140+ hours of below freezing temperatures with a low around 5°F. The youngest one has some green leaves on one trunk but no new leaves on any of them.

I'm not doing anything but watch and wait for now.

Today I noticed nature was already preparing for the worst - seeds from last year's loquat fruit were germinating in the leaf litter under the oldest tree. They might be a foot tall in a year.

@roselee z8b S.W. Texas, here in Temple, we got down to 2º, 6º and 12º three nights in a row, with very cold teens-twenties three days before and 3-days after that plummet. We got 1 " solid sheet ice atop 5" snow for that week. Literature for loquats says they are only cold hardy down to 25º, so I'm not very optimistic it will make it. We've decided to just cut off all branches down to a "Menorah" look, hoping the main trunk and root system is not dead. It'll either shoot out like crazy at each cut, leaving it to look like some southwest exotic cactus, or............ it will not shoot out and we'll hire our tree man to come remove 'the rest' of it. Can't hurt.

My across the street neighbor told my husband out front today he, too, has a loquat in his back yard. He said until yesterday the leaves on his loquat were all "wilted" but still fairly green. Today, he saiys the leaves are all starting to brown brown out like ours. So it would appear loquats really will not take single digit temps. Sigh.

Here's what it looks like today:

Thank you, Sylvia. You give me hope! It's nice to know it may leaf out once again. I can be patient, as I do value this tree. Love making jam with the fruit. It is going to look absolutely awful on the front corner of our property though. Ugh. I'll tell my across-the-street neighbor to also be patient with his. Fortunately for him, his is in his BACK yard where nobody can see how dead it is.

Sylvia, thanks for your prehistoric loquat story, it's hard to just wait, but 2 of my trees are now showing the tiny green growths at the base.

Loquat fruit is hardy to about 25 degrees but the tree can take much colder temperature. We had 16 then 14 degrees in Beaumont and the loquat trees had no damage, except all the fruit froze. I did have a seedling loquat in a gallon pot that was killed. Forgot to bring it in. But all the in ground loquats are fine. I have several, some that were planted last spring. None of them lost their leaves. We were a little east and spared the worst of storm. Still cold.

It may come back from the base. Good news is it will have the root system of a large tree and hopefully recover nicely

@phoenlx7801, That's what I'm hopiing will happen.

My neighbor said this morning his back yard loquat tree's wilting green leaves have perked up a bit. Crispy, dead brown leaves he said are falling off. Sounds like HIS tree will make it. Mine, on the other hand, when bark scratched way down on the central trunk is showing nothing but brown, dry, inner material. I fear if anything, only the roots are alive.............and not sure about that. Sigh.

I have several Loquats 15-20 in an island bed near the street and mine are ugly as can be.... but guess what I found this evening while gardening? The stems on many of them are sprouting hundreds of sprouts up and down the limbs and trunks, with the dead leaves still on the ends. Some have green leaves with the brown dead leaves but mostly brown. If I had cut them down like so many others I would have never known that they're still alive! What I found tonight is just amazing, I'm so happy!

What good news, Meme! I hope mine does the same eventually.

The former home owner here who planted the loquat herself, stopped by yesterday. She was stunned it took such a hit in our freeze, since it is so big. But when she bent the smaller branches down low, and they DID bend, she said the tree is not dead. Then today, I walked out and inspected at the ground and saw this peeking through the bark of the smaller side trunk near ground level. None higher up, or on the larger trunk, mind you. At least it means the roots are not dead! Yay! I may lose the large tree over time, but the smaller trunk may live on!

Peggy, you may start see more sprouts further up on limbs. Only time will tell.

My Bay Leaf tree is doing the same thing. Good news, it's alive! On that one, I'm seeing the sprouts on the newer growth limbs that grew up from the ground level last year.

Julia, the former owner and a Master Gardener, said she thought most all branches that were still flexible like the few she bent would likely leaf out eventually. Encouraged me to cut out any clearly brittle/dead branches that simply died off naturally from last year, as that's typical each year, freeze or no freeze. I would concur with her assessment and recommendations on both counts. I'll just have to wait out the "ugly" phase until the dead leaves finally drop off. Man, that tree looks ugly out front of my house right now. A few leaves HAVE finally begun to let go of the branches and drop below.

I was so happy to find this thread.

My loquat took a beating as well. I will miss the fruit this year but looking forward to it coming back next year.

Thank you all!

@Natasha Hatcher, as was said above, don't give up on it. Even as bad as mine froze off, just this morning I went out and saw shoots pushing through as far up as 6' on 2 of the trunks. Mind you, it is a 20-25' tree, so there mays still be dead parts up high we'll have to have cut off, but I'm waiting until winter to do any heavy-duty cutting on it. It has been "wounded" enough with recovering from the winter freeze. No point in shocking it further right now.

It still isn't letting go of the brown leaves without my pulling on them, but I'm so excited it looks like I won't lose this well-established, prolifically-fruiting tree after all. Here are the new branches/trunks-to-be down near the bottom of the tree, already growing fairly fast I think.

And here are the shoots and one small branch emerging:

Heck, this thing may create a bunch of new branches, fill out nicer and allow me to finally shape the thing the way I want it to look (balance the top left and right) and to eliminate its tendancy to put on growth/width toward the fence, which I'd like to halt.

Today I'm encouraged even more. Went out and looked way up into the brown, gnarly leaves and spotted a fair amount of shoots way out on limbs, so I may not have to cut them back as severely (like a Joshua tree) as I thought. I held down a branch this morning for a good photo of shoots emerged this week easily 7' out from a central trunk on this particular sub-branch.

And these shoots were even higher up on the tree on a different trunk and branching:

As you can see, the tree still holds on tightly to the dead leaves. When I try to grab a bunch and pull them off, it is reticent to release them even then.

QUESTION: Today, we went out and cut off (as high up as we could reach with the extendable chain saw) any limbs on this severely damaged tree that are clearly dead, brittle and no new green shoots. There's still lots more dead branches higher up, but we don't do "saws up on ladders" at our age, and a pro will have to do the rest with a lift bucket.

We fully understand we're likely going to lose an entire main trunk on this tree, if not lose the ENTIRE tree above ground. But for now, we're taking it out in stages, to see if there's any hope of saving it in some form or another.

That said, I'm concerned about one limb about 5" inch diameter we decided to leave alone this morning. It has a number of clusters of new green shoots/leaves out on the ends of its remote branchings, but there is a 2' or so swath where the skin/bark is cracking (see photo below) where the thin bark is, in one place, actually peeling away from the branch. The inner limb tissue, as you can see below, is brown. Like I said, it is supporting new shoots and leaf clusters farther out on the limb just fine. Do you think I should do something proactive to manage this potential virus/insect potential entry site? Can I treat it with the black spray/gooey tar-like sealer I've used for years on tree cuts and tape that skin/bark maybe with duct tape to the limb so air and insects don't get in and kill off this limb? Or should we write off this limb and go ahead and remove it. Again, we are willing to resign ourselves to losing most above ground parts of this tree, if a slow death is what we are seeing (like the Tx. Mt. Laurel I lost, finally, despite some new shoots) Attaching a few pics of the bark cracking and the shape currently, after our cutting back this morning. The trimmed out limbs generated a 7' tall 10' wide pile of debris for pick-up Monday. City is really gonna love me, NOT.

Haven't noticed signs of cracking bark on other limbs after a thorough inspection once this one was discovered, just this one location on a major limb visible at the lower left in the top photo, with said damage at the elbow bend in that trunk. Not sure if it cracked during on long after the actualy freezeing temps in February.

What advice can you give me here? If it were your loquat, would you just top the tree so it will quit struggling to survive way up high, say perhaps cut it at the bottom electric line in the photo, hoping the tree will regrow anew off the clearly healthy roots? Please note, the bulk of the green visible in the ball of vegetative growth in the photo is actually a neighbor's tree right across the street, from this camera perspective. If photo is enlarged, only the bright lime green shoots are on MY tree.

Or would you, at this 5 months out juncture, give up on saving this tree in its current iteration, now that is it showing serious bark damage and take down the main trunk at some level? If so, would you make that aggressive cut just ABOVE the fork, where the cracking seems to begin or BELOW the fork, leaving just the erect, bare trunk. Of course, we would thoroughly treat 8" cuts with a thick.

This approach, although drastic, and aesthetically unsatisfying for a long time, would basically promote a brand new tree above ground growing off the well-established root system and main trunk. The ultimate shape on the resulting 'new tree' might not be so pretety, but perhaps with some creative pruning over the years, could once again be nearly oval in its form. My goal is for it to one day be the prolific fruiting tree it once was. I see the alternative approach not so appealing: letting it struggle another 5 months and maybe, put on a bit more new leaf growh, then eventually die a slow death.

Right now with this heat, I don't think I would cut aggressively or cut it to the ground, the whole thing just might go into shock and die. With the crack in the bark, maybe it will seal itself and grow new bark? Mine look like that and I'm just waiting too. I read an article the other day that it might take 2 years for some trees to recover.

Thanks for the reply, Meme. Since posting those last photos, I've discovered the bark is cracking much further down on main trunk, to within a few inches of the ground. Photo below is of the trunk at the ground. I just don't think this tree will survive. But I'll wait until the new leaf clusters begin to die off, like they did on my Tx Mt. Laurel, before giving up on it. However long that takes. Then I'll know for sure the roots cannot support leaves or likely produce any new ones. Just glad I got a couple seedlings rooted in pots out back that I was rooting to take down to our cabin. Looks like I may have to plant one up here in a year or so. But quite honestly, I just don't see how it can survive this much splitting bark. It does appear to be on virtually every branch now, so the bark splitting away seems to be getting worse just this week. Just a matter of time before some insect or disease gets inside such large cracks, if they're not already doing so and I just can't see them.

I really do not know much about loquats but I would wait. It might form an inner bark . I would wait till winter. My sister in Alaska said she had a tree that looked dead for 4 years and then recovered. . I know ; Alaska is a different place and they have different trees and different sorts of freezes. This one; the fall freeze came so quick and hard that the sap had not sunk yet and froze and shattered thre tree and it still survived. She left it because she was sailing in the Mederterainian on a job ( really tough job). She was not asitting and staring at it. Her husband does not garden. When she got back; there was so much left to do taming the run away agelica and berry bushes that it got another year repreave and then one spring itburst out in leafage.

I vote for waiting till wintwer. Who wants to trim in the summer anyway.

What an amazing story about their tree, Mara. Four years! And it survived to come back. Just amazing. Well, we've decided to definitely do no more cutting on this loquat. Having cut off the clearly brittle and dead limbs, it's at least now in the upright/vertical shape I was wanting to re-shape it into. It's so tall I can't really even SEE the browned leaves up there it refuses to drop. If none of the new leaf clusters down lower die off in the next ffew months, I'll know it's still got viable regrowth ability off its roots and main trunk. Then if it puts out even more new growth this coming spring growing season, that will be further indication it's going to make it............ONE DAY. So we're going to just forget about it for now. I do tend to obsess sometimes. We'll let it recovery as it is able, on its own timetable. If no new growth comes out between now and next spring, or recently regrown leaf clusters begin to die off, we may reconsider removal at that time.