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Plum tree defoliation - silver leaf?

borgadrborgadr Posts: 718
edited September 2023 in Plants
One of my plum trees has been dropping leaves for weeks now, and looks like this:



It was hard-pruned in mid-summer last year (during the drought) by tree surgeons, but these symptoms only presented as of this summer. We have never pruned it at any other time of year 

Some if the leaves look like this (below), but most just look perfectly normal.



We have an identical tree 20 metres away that was also hard pruned last summer but looks fine (below)



Does anyone have experience with silver leaf and know whether this looks like what it might be? Or any idea of what it might be?

Posts

  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    @borgadr, from what I can remember when our purple plum trees had silver leaf disease, the diseased leaves did have a silvery sheen to them like your photo so it could be that unfortunately.  We had, in error, pruned ours at the wrong time of the year unlike you.

    I'm finding a big Norwegian Maple (not ours) and my lovely 13ft high pittospernum have started dropping their leaves already and I can only guess it's weather related.

    Does the first tree have more competition from closer neighbouring trees?
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • borgadrborgadr Posts: 718
    No @Lizzie27, it's pretty clear of other trees.  Both those plum trees get full sun for most of the day. When you had it, did it spread to anything else? (and did you take any steps to stop it spreading?)  I take it the tree died.
  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    @borgadr,  the previous owner was paranoid about privacy and had planted a dozen of these trees only a foot apart at the base of a retaining wall, which was pretty stupid really. As we didn't know any better at the time, we pruned them in the winter so we could see what we were doing and gradually one by one, they started to die off. I wasn't that bothered really, so we just chopped down the dead ones over the years. There are  4 left, one is definitely looking like it's on the way out, one might be and two are okay.
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • borgadrborgadr Posts: 718
    Thank you @Lizzie27
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