"Dr. McKoy" to SICK BAY please!

[Gnarlyoak]

My parents appear to have a rather poorly Bay tree, which appears to be rapidly declining towards death! Can anyone ID possible causes for sudden dieback and recommend any potential remedy to save it?

 

Tree is 10+ yrs old. Sits in predominantly sunny position. In NW England, so drought not an issue! After two hard winters, last year leaves showed signs of some distress, with new growth leaves curling at the tips and browning at the edges. This winter has been very mild by comparison to last two. Now approx 40% the canopy appears to be dying back, this has occured very quickly over last 5/6 weeks.

[David Humphries]

Looks like an acute case of snowy-itus

 

Our bay tree in the front of the house has done a very similar thing after last months snow.

 

 

 

 

 

.

[tommer9]

Is it in the ground or a pot? If in a pot then the roots wil have got very cold too in the snow, which will have affected it even more so.

[Gollum]

Wind scorch.

Should recover no problem.

[Gollum]

Wind scorch.

Should recover no problem.

 

Or could be red spider mite damage from last year.

shows as pale leaf August September and then Brown winter /spring

[agg221]

Even if the top does die, don't give up on it.

 

Last year's winter hit several things in our garden really hard. Olive and fig in pots, fig in ground and bay in ground.

 

Olive lost all its leaves and leafed out again in June. Fig in pot (slightly sheltered) leafed out in June and the fig in the ground only leafed out in August. The bay top did die, but it's grown back strongly from below ground (shoots didn't show until July/August), and I'll pick one to form a new head in time.

 

Alec

[RobRainford]

we had 2 bays that just gave up their whole top in the worst of the snow we had in 2010. tried to re sprout but weren't doing too well so they got the chop!

 

i would say yours have just suffered a bit from the cold rick