Pain in the Ash

[Paddy1000111]

Hi Everyone,

 

So I have an Ash tree that is looking like a bit of a sick puppy and I wanted a little bit of input from guys who have experience with Chalara. The tree itself is in West Dorset and there doesn't appear to be any cases registered anywhere close. The property has a good 2 figure sum of ash trees on it and this seems to be the only one suffering in any way. 

 

The tree overall looks poor, it's not thriving at all with a lot of dead/dying limbs. There is new growth from lower sections of the main trunk and the only growth that is green is from new/fresh branches, there are cankers and most of the growth seems to be dying. I can't see any symptoms of die back, no black splotches on leaves, no lens shaped lesions etc. The leaf litter is pretty normal, no black twigs etc. The rest of the Ash trees on the property are thriving, full crowns, no dead limbs (the next large ash tree being around 20m from this one. 

 

What do people make of it? I'm at a bit of a loss of what to do with it seeing as the chances of it having ash die back are very small. It sure isn't healthy though. 

Edited September 23, 2020 by Paddy1000111

[Vedhoggar]

In the second image there looks like some ground disturbance on other side of fence, has there been any work undertaken there in recent years?

[Paddy1000111]

Ahh, now you're on to something. The area of bare dirt is the sheep however where the new oak trees are on the right in the 3rd image is where a couple hundred tonnes of mud was shifted from another part of the property a couple of years back. There's also a lake on the left of the tree, can that cause root rot of some sort? 

[Dan Maynard]

I can't quite make out the lie of the land, it looks a bit like the left side of the stem has no flare but rather goes straight down into the ground. How far did the new mud spread towards the tree?

[Paddy1000111]

It's around 5ft from the tree. There's a steep drop off the back (right side) that's the natural "lay of the land" there was a steep drop off from the back of the lake but it got levelled out and a load of trees (oak, maple, beech) planted on the new hill, all of those are growing well. I can't say 100% where the soil went, I wasn't there at the time!