Sudden death in garden Cedar

[nepia]

I have a tiny cedar to remove compared to that but that displayed v similar symptoms: the low trunk was weeping in three or four places last year and then seemed to stop.

Terminal decline has been recent and rapid. The tree's gone from apparently healthy in the crown to obviously dead in about 6 weeks.

 

My only and totally inexpert thought as to the cause was a Phytophthora.

[daltontrees]

I have a tiny cedar to remove compared to that but that displayed v similar symptoms: the low trunk was weeping in three or four places last year and then seemed to stop.

Terminal decline has been recent and rapid. The tree's gone from apparently healthy in the crown to obviously dead in about 6 weeks.

 

My only and totally inexpert thought as to the cause was a Phytophthora.

 

Which species of Phytopthora?

[agg221]

I reckon it's Delabodge going round doing something nasty to them to ensure a constant supply....

 

Alec

[nepia]

Which species of Phytopthora?

 

 

Not a clue! Hence 'inexpert thought'!

[Tom D]

I've seen a few with honey fungus that wept resin like that, pull off some bark and look for the bootlaces....

[nepia]

I did think of HF having taken a hold on a stressed tree but the bark was all firm so I wasn't going to take implements to it to peel some.

I did scrabble around the base but found no bootlaces and there was no mushroom odour to the topsoil.

[Ian88]

Thanks every one. Bit of an unknown then. I may see if I can remove some bark from the base and have a look there and have a little climb to get a closer look. I would have thought its all to fast for a beetles.

[daltontrees]

Not a clue! Hence 'inexpert thought'!

 

Hope rather than expectation by me, thought I'd ask anyway. I'm on the Sirococcus scent anyway.

[nepia]

Julian, is that picture in your first post of Sirococcus? If so it looks nothing like the tree here, which resembles the very first pic by the OP. All needles - what few are left - are a uniform dead brown colour: there isn't a spot of green on the tree and from what I'm told by the owner the entire tree turned brown in a matter of weeks.

 

 

...just found the pic online and yes, it is of Sirococcus. Now I have the reference I'll examine the tree closely when I next attend.

[daltontrees]

Julian, is that picture in your first post of Sirococcus? If so it looks nothing like the tree here, which resembles the very first pic by the OP. All needles - what few are left - are a uniform dead brown colour: there isn't a spot of green on the tree and from what I'm told by the owner the entire tree turned brown in a matter of weeks.

 

 

...just found the pic online and yes, it is of Sirococcus. Now I have the reference I'll examine the tree closely when I next attend.

 

Well, who knows? Looking up pests that affect Cedar on the FC site throws up Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (Pine Wilt Disease) too, and americaln sites confirm this will kill a tree within weeks. Such rapid deaths are like nthe good old bad old DED, complete dysfunction of the vascular system. In PWD it is caused by nematodes rupturing the resin ducts, seemingly causing tracheid cavitation and as the American Phytopathological Society puts it 'just as a person cannot drink through a straw with holes in it, the tree cannot move water upward and consequently wilts and dies'. The US site does not list Cedar as a host, but the FC certainly suggests it.

 

HF is a rank amateur compared to these instant killer diseases.