Beech, regrowth from stump

[Kevm]

I cut down a tall straggly hedge a few years back and replanted beech in the gaps it is now generally doing well but the biggest stump, about 24" across had some nice growth but this year it has died.

It has some fungal growth on the top of it and I wonder if it has affected it, the worrying thing is that a new plant either side have some dead leaves.

I can cut it off low and replant around it but if it is diseased will it spread?

  

[Steve Bullman]

i'd say you were lucky to get regrowth at all cutting a stem that size down.

[Stubby]

3 hours ago, Kevm said:

I cut down a tall straggly hedge a few years back and replanted beech in the gaps it is now generally doing well but the biggest stump, about 24" across had some nice growth but this year it has died.

It has some fungal growth on the top of it and I wonder if it has affected it, the worrying thing is that a new plant either side have some dead leaves.

I can cut it off low and replant around it but if it is diseased will it spread?

  

File it under M for miracle with Beech ! 

[Kevm]

So you don't think there is any disease/fungus that has killed it and is affecting the next door plants then, just the fact that the stump and root system was too big.

 

[Paul in the woods]

I have something similar, a few beech stumps in an old hedge. They were cut down a few years ago and they've all regrown to some extent from the edge. The ones that had a few small low down branches that were left seem ok, the one stump without any branches has thrown up some weak growth that has died off and gone brown over the last month. I assume the growth isn't enough to sustain the stump and it's slowly dying. I also note some mature beech trees are showing the odd patch of die back as well.

 

 

[openspaceman]

7 minutes ago, Paul in the woods said:

I assume the growth isn't enough to sustain the stump and it's slowly dying

Yes this would be my take on it, maybe with a little help from a fungal attack.

 

I managed an estate where there was beech coppice that had last been cut around the first world war, there were records of sphagnum moss being taken at the same time. The boundaries were grown out hedges like the picture, with signs of previous hedge laying, and I concluded the genotype of beech was selected by hedging and coppicing over the years to sprout, stools and trees that didn't had died off.