Ink coming from maple leaves.

[Beng]

A few weeks back I bought a few nice trees from a bonsai nursery. He had a sick maple and a sick satsuki which would have been worth well over 1k each in their prime he more or less gave me the two for 50 dollars when I showed interest in nursing them back to health.

The top of the maple seems to be dying off, i'm not sure the species but it's a tiny leaf similar to kiyohime. The maple clearly has some kind of root problem, I believe the largest root is girdling the rest of the trunk killing the top of the tree. For now I slip potted it into a larger anderson flat with pure pumice, next spring i'll work the roots, or apply an air layer further up the trunk to start them over. Strangely after it rained yesterday I noticed a black ink like liquid dripping from the maple leaves. It looks almost like if you dripped a drop of ink onto white paper, but instead of spreading on the leaf the leaf remains green and it drips off. After the rain stops it more or less pools beneath the leaves forming dark spots. Tried googling it but only found things about cankers which this is not. Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? Really odd, i have no idea what it is, I will try to get a picture the next time it's raining.

Ben

 

[berobinson82]

Would love to see a picture of this, please.

 

[Beng]

It's pouring today will see if its doing it when I get home from work tonight.

 

[Beng]

So no new black dripping tonight. Emry's mentioned that he thought it was fly poop/throwup, he's probably right. My wife mentioned that last week during the heat wave there were tons of flys around that particular tree. I said to her that it made sense as it was my only tree with all organic soil. I did notice fly droppings on some of the leaves which are little black shiny dots. So his guess of dissolving fly poop/throwup seems spot on to me!

 

[lordy]

If you havent had them through too many rains, I was going to suggest that it might have been foliar fed with kelp or seaweed fert. That stuff is a thin blackish liquid. Maybe it dried on the leaves then washed off. But fly crap sounds more interesting.

 

[0soyoung]

But fly crap sounds more interesting.

Indeed it does! Ben's place must be really abuzz! How does one get that many flies in one place?

 

[Beng]

Well this sick trees main problem is I suspect there's some rotting in the root ball. It's a purely organic soil more or less mid. Must be heaven for flies with my organic fertilizer on top. I'll have to switch that tree to chemical frets to cut down on the flies on it. My wife says our yards heaven for bees, dragonflies, butterflies, and flies water available even on the hottest days and an unlimited supply of flowers with all the flowering species I have...