Bacterial? Rapid infection on japanese maple

[coh]

I had a Chinese quince a number of years ago that never woke up after a winter. I'm pretty sure I let it dry out too much while in storage. It just never budded out in the spring, even though the cambium was green for a couple of months. When I finally gave up and unpotted it the roots did look somewhat like the ones here. Stringy, dry, no actively growing tips.

 

[bwaynef]

There's likely an extension office in your county that can help you to get this pathogen ID'd. It seems we're all guessing. They could culture it for a few days and ID it by microscope ...and hopefully then you'd have a better shot at eliminating the issue.

 

[cmeg1]

Here are a few more pictures from today. I went ahead and cut one of the branches off that was probably accessory and then made a longitudinal cut. I don't think the vasculature is involved, but you all be the judge.

Picture 1: Primary branch with blackened base.
View attachment 258485

Picture 2: Longitudinal cut.
View attachment 258486

Picture 3: Showing cross section
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Picture 4: Peeled back the bark to show the black is just superficial.
View attachment 258488

Showing the whole tree dry now.
View attachment 258489

It almost looks a bit dry if you ask me with too large a particle.That will make roots rot when they dry and get rewetted.
Hows it doing?

 

[Lars Grimm]

It almost looks a bit dry if you ask me with too large a particle.That will make roots rot when they dry and get rewetted.
Hows it doing?

It is just sitting there doing nothing. I suspect the worst, but will just wait and see.

 

[Lars Grimm]

There's likely an extension office in your county that can help you to get this pathogen ID'd. It seems we're all guessing. They could culture it for a few days and ID it by microscope ...and hopefully then you'd have a better shot at eliminating the issue.

Yup, I have reached out to them to learn the process to send samples.

 

[bwaynef]

Yup, I have reached out to them to learn the process to send samples.

I'm lucky to live/work for the land grant university of SC. In a meeting for something else, I asked one of the extension agents a pathogen question and he told me about the Plant and Pest Diagnostic Clinic that the Extension Offices send their samples to. Basically I got faster service by showing up at the office instead of having to wait on USPS. Good luck.

 

[ConorDash]

I stumbled across this thread looking for my own info on some black discoloration appearing on a few maple leaves of mine. Curious now, what happened with this? Been no replies.

 

[Lars Grimm]

I stumbled across this thread looking for my own info on some black discoloration appearing on a few maple leaves of mine. Curious now, what happened with this? Been no replies.

Unfortunately, the tree died despite my best efforts and the help from everyone on this forum. In looking back and talking with some others after the fact, I think the progression was too rapid for a bacterial infection, fungal infection, or root rot. I suspect it may have been a victim of my cat peeing on it and creating a highly toxic environment. It went from completely fine to almost dead in such a short period of time. I am only speculating though.

 

[ConorDash]

Yes I read that theory.. wow. If so, that’s an amazingly good point by @rockm , absolutely impossible thing! If it’s true. As you say, seems most likely.

 

[Arlithrien]

Hi All,

Another day, another problem. I love this hobby, but sometimes it can be very demoralizing. I have a very nice shohin japanese maple that very rapidly was struck by what I presume is a bacterial infection.

Day 1: The tree looks healthy. I decide to do some light clean up and remove some minor accessory growth. I pruned back a couple long shoots. Just very minor clean up. The scissors had been sterilized prior to use.
Day 2: Normal day, nothing special to the best of my knowledge.
Day 3: I go out to water my trees and notice that all of the foliage looks wilted. The leaves felt like they had lost all turgor and felt crispy. I assumed that somehow I had missed watering the day before. We have had temps in the 90s with high humidity. I felt stupid but put the tree in shade, watered it and assumed it was going to partially self-defoliate. Here is a picture from that day.
View attachment 258299
Day 4: My whole family gets a horrible GI bug. Enough said.... It rained though.
Day 5: The tree sits in shade. The leaves continue to look worse.
Day 6: I come home from work and have to move the trees around before leaving for a four day vacation. The leaves are looking pretty bad and so I decide to just defoliate them since they were going to fall off anyway. About 15 minutes before I have to get into the car and go, I notice a discoloration on one of the stems (see picture below). There is nothing I could do at the time, except fret about it while on my trip.
View attachment 258300

Day 10: I come back home from my trip and notice additional purple/black discoloration on many stems. It is very patchy, sometimes involving primary, secondary, or tertiary branches. See picture below.
View attachment 258301

I don't have a great zoomed out picture from before I left and I was in such a hurry I can't be sure how much/if this has progressed in the last few days. My assumption was that given the very fast rate of progression this must be a bacterial infection. I found this article from Michael Hagedorn suggesting it could be verticillium or pseudomonas. I just gave a total plant drench with phyton 27 and moved it to shade away from everything else. I have read that some people advocate pruning away infected areas, but some areas of blackening are where the primary branch meets the trunk. This would essentially require me to cut off almost all the primary branches.

Any help would be extremely appreciated!! I am at wit's end here as this seemed to come very fast out of the blue.

Sorry to see this happen. I had similar wilting happen to one of my Japanese maples. I was out of town for almost 2 weeks and left the fan blowing on them. Came back and watered a ton to compensate. The youngest seedlings died but most of them bounced back except for this one which looked fine other than the wilting.

Ended up repotting it into inorganic substrate and kept it in my terrarium greenhouse for the last 3 weeks. It's looking a little better maybe due to the high humidity keeping it hydrated. When I take it out, it starts to wilt again so I'll probably keep it in there until it shows signs of new growth or dies.

 

[Lars Grimm]

Yes I read that theory.. wow. If so, that’s an amazingly good point by @rockm , absolutely impossible thing! If it’s true. As you say, seems most likely.

In retrospect there might not have been anything I could have done. I guess if I suspected cat urine as the culprit, I could have just aggressively flushed the root system and soaked it to try and normalize the osmotic gradient. It might have already been too late though.

 

[ConorDash]

In retrospect there might not have been anything I could have done. I guess if I suspected cat urine as the culprit, I could have just aggressively flushed the root system and soaked it to try and normalize the osmotic gradient. It might have already been too late though.

And if you had done, it may have caused more problems somehow, without any guarantee of it helping!

Nope, nothing you could do. I personally dread this situation. 100%. Thinking of this now makes me think I’ll never buy another tree, will just keep mine and not want to waste anymore money on the prospect of one dying..ah, I’m not thinking about it anymore, I’m going to sleep.. lol.