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Help needed with diseased tree
Tony24
Posts: 14
A tree in the London street where I live appears to be diseased.
The leaves are about 4 inches long. There is a large lesion in the trunk about a yard above the ground. It goes deep into trunk and has a dark a sticky appearance. There are numerous smaller lesions on higher branches.
Can anyone tell me:
1. What type of tree it is?
2. What the disease is?
3. If there is anything I can do to cure it?
0
Posts
Hi Tony, It looks like it might be a cherry tree of some kind. With the different appearance of the lower and upper trunk, it looks like it has been grafted and the graft has failed, very probably by being infected with bacterial canker:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=86
As you can see from the RHS advice above, there is now no treatment available so the best course of action would be to replace the tree, unfortunately. Even if Bordeaux Mixture were available, a lesion on the main trunk like this would not respond.
Thanks Bob. That's bad news. Replacing it would be down to Camden Council. I was hoping there might be something I could do to help it as I think Camden will just wait for it to die completely and perhaps eventually replace it.
I'd put money on it that there was once a tie under that lump which was left on way too long.
Hostafan. Bob above suggests it may be a graft that has failed. I don't know much about grafts but the texture of the bark above and below the lump seems to be the same which made me wonder if the lump was caused by the disease itself. Or perhaps as you say, by a tie around the trunk.
Logan. I don't have the tools or knowledge to attempt that. I guess if it's doomed I'll report it to the council and let them deal with it. If there was some sort of treatment that might fix it I would certainly give it a try.
the bark texture was my first thought too but a graft is normally no more than a few inches above soil level . From the photos, it looks too high for a graft, but I might well be wrong.