Odd new growth on my Trident

[karen82]

My Trident has weird looking sort of scrunched-up looking new growth all over it. It doesn't look like its normal spring foliage at all. I noticed one small cluster (2-3 little leaves) had turned blackish and later fell off, which seems fungal, but the other foliage looks green and healthy.. just not normal.

Here is what it looked like leafing out last year:



And this year:
Note that the foliage towards the bottom doesn't look scrunched up at all - those are grafted seedlings. They all have normal, healthy looking foliage, just a little damage from threading.


Is the weird foliage something to be worried about?

 

[Stan Kengai]

It could be fungal, but it could also be a root issue or some sort of shock. What have you done with the plant recently? Did you treat with a prophylactic winter spray? Where was it kept during the winter? I have one that I dug from the ground this spring that looks similar. The fact that the leaves have turned green disuades me from thinking it is fungal.

 

[karen82]

I didn't treat it with a winter spray. It spent the winter outside with the pot buried in the ground by the house with some burlap around it and snow piled over. It seemed healthy last year.

I DID do some work on it this spring which might've stressed it. I pulled it out of winter storage as soon as the ground thawed, gave it a week in the greenhouse to start waking up, then barerooted it, drilled some small holes in the root base for thread grafts, and repotted it into a larger grow box. I didn't prune the roots very much, though. Could I have introduced some infection by drilling those holes?
Also I have it in the greenhouse temporarily until the risk of frost is past but the greenhouse is only minimally heated so I don't think that should affect it much.

 

[Stan Kengai]

Infections from drilling would likely manifest themselve near the drill site. I would guess that it is stressed either from the rootwork (perhaps the roots dried out a little during your grafting operation) or from being forced out of dormancy early. I don't think it's anything to worry about, and it will give you short internodes, at least temporarily. If it has not recovered by early summer, I would consider other causes.

 

[karen82]

Thanks... I hope it's just a bit stressed and not sick. The leaves don't look normal, but don't specifically look sick at least.
I only forced it out of dormancy a bit early because the seedlings I had ordered for grafting were starting to leaf out and couldn't wait.

 

[karen82]

Foliage still looks off. I'm getting worried even though it is still all dark green at least. The foliage on the grafts looks normal but a bit yellowed. The tree itself has all these little puffs of super dense foliage with almost no internodes and then ares where there's dieback or just no buds. It's weird. Last winter was very mild compared to the year before, and it handled that winter well with almost no dieback.

 

[augustine]

Question - could it be freeze damage?

 

[karen82]

Question - could it be freeze damage?

It's possible some of the dieback is from the cold over winter - though it was milder than last winter.
The new growth can't be use to freeze damage though, the tree was pulled from winter storage as soon as the ground thawed and put into a cool greenhouse, completely protected from frost.

 

[NOZZLE HEAD]

Did you use any rooting hormones when you did the root work?

It looks like a hormonal imbalance to me, not disease. Do you use any herbicides in your landscapes areas around your trees? Many herbicides have hormonal interactions.

 

[cbroad]

a hormonal imbalance

Was thinking the same thing.

I got a free batch of crape myrtles from the nursery where I used to work. Someone sprayed them with herbicide "accidentally" . The result was really stunted and congested growth.

The effects lasted half a season, while one took a whole year to push normal growth, but all eventually resumed normal growth.

On a side note, I've had weird growth before on maples (amur) because of superthrive.

 

[karen82]

Did you use any rooting hormones when you did the root work?

It looks like a hormonal imbalance to me, not disease. Do you use any herbicides in your landscapes areas around your trees? Many herbicides have hormonal interactions.

I didn't use any rooting hormones or herbicides. I used cut paste on the grafts, and have given it some fairly dilute miracle-gro but that is it.. we have such a small patch of lawn we don't even use weed killers or other lawn chemicals.
Of course, we've only lived here 2 1/2 years and the previous owners left behind some round-up and other chemicals but we don't use them.

 

[NOZZLE HEAD]

I didn't use any rooting hormones or herbicides. I used cut paste on the grafts, and have given it some fairly dilute miracle-gro but that is it.. we have such a small patch of lawn we don't even use weed killers or other lawn chemicals.
Of course, we've only lived here 2 1/2 years and the previous owners left behind some round-up and other chemicals but we don't use them.

Do you use purchased compost as part of your bonsai mix? It can occasionally contain weird PGR type herbicides.

On the bright side the weird foliage looks generally heathy.