Last years drought and damage to mature trees.

[Baldbloke]

One of our mature Beech trees in the garden shed its leaves by August last year and is very short of foliage this year.

We’ve also lost a large Rowan and I’m thinking another Beech is on the way out.

England was as dry as us in parts of Scotland but I’ve not heard of many tree losses on Arbtalk. Am I mistaken?

[Mick Dempsey]

I’m in the UK obvs, but the beech for instance, is it a garden tree in that it’s sitting in a lawn?

 

I can imagine a woodland beech rooted in shade would suffer less from drought than one in the middle of a lawn.

 

Just musing.

 

 

Edited May 20, 2019 by Mick Dempsey

[Mark J]

Aye, grass can dessicate the soil to 1.5m or thereabouts. That could cause problems for relatively shallow rooting beech trees.

[Gary Prentice]

Early leaf loss is just a survival mechanism in some species in drought conditions. I think Beech is one of the species where it's predicted that their range will change if the results of climate change is as predicted.

 

Give it chance to recover and mulch it if you can.

[nepia]

I don't know about beech but that's certainly seems to be true of at least some plums. We have a ?10-year old flowering cherry that lost its leaves in July last year:  it's fine now with all of the branches in leaf.

[Baldbloke]

I’m in the UK obvs, but the beech for instance, is it a garden tree in that it’s sitting in a lawn?  

I can imagine a woodland beech rooted in shade would suffer less from drought than one in the middle of a lawn.

 

Just musing.

 

 

 

It is a garden tree but not rooted under grass. But, the two I’m concerned about are on the south side of the group and are bordered by an ancient hardcore track. So the roots aren’t really in the shade.

 

We lost a big Beech a few years ago in full leaf alongside another driveway that runs north south. There was a summer gale from the east where the tree had inadequate root anchorage.

 

I was shocked at how shallow the roots were

No amount of pulling would get it back up[emoji3]

[Baldbloke]

Aye, grass can dessicate the soil to 1.5m or thereabouts. That could cause problems for relatively shallow rooting beech trees.

Good point as i don’t reckon the roots go that deep

[Baldbloke]

 

Yup, they are under grass/moss. Track on one side and grass over roots

 

 

This side gives a better idea of how thin the foliage is

[jfc]

I haven't noticed any significant loss of beech trees here in Fife. That one that lifted the root plate maay well have suffered from compaction of roots under the track. I couldn't see any significant roots coming off the root plate on that side. It is hard to tell with pics though. As Gary said mulching may help.

[MattyF]

Thought the same , weird how the roots stop dead in line with the track, usually big beech I’ve seen wind thrown have meripilus but If it was meripilus you would expect a lot smaller root plate..

Looks like the roots along the track have been severed almost?

Have you had utilities put in ?