Sick Wellingtonia

[Milly]

Hi all,

 

As you know I am not a forester nor a tree surgeon but I do however own a forest thus have a vested interest in trees and we have some beautiful old trees in the gardens.

Now to my question we have a number of Wellingtonia trees and very large cedars. One of the Wellingtonia is in poor health there are two next to each other the biggest is tall and healthy.

The bark has been stripped back 3 feet from the ground up, I believe by animals in the past it also has had ivy strangling it now cut back.

The issue is one side of the tree is in good condition the other side is dead any suggestions of what could be wrong or how I can help the tree.

 

This picture is of both trees the smaller one is in poor health.

 

This one shows the stripped bark ;-(

 

 

This one shows the unhealthy side.

 

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Will try that ,as we have some stunning trees that I would not want to loose.

Most of the trees are healthy bar that one the only trees that are suffering at the moment are the horse chestnuts as they have leaf moth and are dropping there leaves already.

 

clearing the leaves and burning them has been working well to control the leaf miners of horse chestnuts.

[Milly]

We burn all the leaves as its affecting all our HC's ;-(

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

you could always talk to Glyn percival at bartletts about allicin treatments

[ScottF]

dont rule out the dry weather we have experienced for a long time now, a decade in fact.

 

What Tony said- I think if these really dry Springs persist we're going to see lots of mortality with trees effectively being pushed out of their previous hardiness range. I'd expect beech, birch and a host of conifers to start looking ropey.

 

I'd second the idea about mulching too- bear in mind that this tree wants to be in a stand setting with deep, free-draining soils perfectly modified over many hundreds of years to contain all of the microflora and fauna they need. That's not to mention the dynamic action of fire which it's adapted to resist, and which will weed out competitor species and reduce them, effectively, to a high P plant food.

 

That these trees grow at all in highly-competitive grass and subject to the predations of grazing animals in a wood pasture matrix is a miracle...

[Fungus]

allicin treatments

 

Tony,

Remenber this and the following posts ?

[Milly]

Fungus,

I did read the thread with interest I am not a council nor do I have the resorses sadly.

We have a number of HC the ones that are located in our park ,I have been giving extra water, as I read some where that will benefit the trees all the HC leaves are burnt.

Off topic but the French use the conkers as deterrents for spiders you often see conkers on their window cills.

As for the cedar Ill try the mulch and also going to remove all the dead branches when our new climber arrives ;-)

[ScottF]

If you've got access to mulch, I'd mulch the lot if I were you. It can do wonders.

[delabodge]

where abouts are you milly,,,?which part of country?

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Tony,

Remenber this and the following posts ?

 

But what if the tree is declining due to psuedomonas and leaf monor, surely it is worth trying it does seem to have posative long term effcts:confused1:

[Milly]

The Loire valley in France ! My understanding leaf moth is rife throughout Europe. Last year we cut back one of the HC this year its leaves have lasted longer than the other trees. So may do the same to the other trees along with other measures.

The Cedar is the sad one as its such a great tree

 

These are another two of our cedars but these ones are in great condition

 

Edited July 30, 2011 by Milly