Possible pest disease identification

[Maiden69]

Hi all, I was cleaning up the yard and moving my trees around in preparation for today's hard freeze and noticed this in my backyard oaks. There is a little bit on the oak where my trees and bench are located, but the majority is on the one in the other corner of the yard. I'm not entirely blind, but I do use glasses for reading and never wear them in the backyard unless I am working on the trees, so from a distance, I never noticed this damage before. I thought about termites, but I don't see any in the area, no little holes, remains, or nests. The tree was healthy all season.

Any help or insight to what it could be. So I can take steps to prevent whatever it is from migrating into my trees.

 

[0soyoung]

The base of the trunk looks like the after effects of serious desiccation two or more years ago. The cambium died back then and has now decayed to the point that the bark can fall off. Obviously this didn't girdle the trunk (or the tree would be dead by now), so you could just flake off the loose bark by hand, of you want. You will uncover the regrowth 'lips' at the edges, if I'm correctly assessing things.

There is nothing more for you to do other than patiently watch what happens. It will be years until the bare wood is overgrown. If it is on a breezy location it may topple over in 5+ more years as the trunk looses strength because of the rotting of this deadwood. Alternatively you might just replace it this spring and take more care to keep the replacement adequately watered until it is 'established'.

The branch damage could have the same origin, but it looks a lot like what raccoons do to trees, though they usually also do a lot of scratching climbing up three trunk. A short fence is about all it takes to deter them on my experience.

 

[Shibui]

The actual damage appears to be older. I can see the cambium rolling over the edges to try to heal the breach and that doesn't usually happen for many months. Often damage is not noticeable because there's still bark covering the dead area. Unless you look real close and notice the bark is sunken or wrinkled you don't see anything until the old bark falls off as it has here.

There are many reasons for damage like this. @0soyoung has already offered dehydration. I'll add several more
Physical damage - The bark has been physically hit by something. Regular culprits can include: line trimmer, lawn mower, pushbike, car, etc.
Sunburn - Usually shows up a bit quicker as discolored bark but eventually the dead bark will fall to reveal a dead section.
Disease - Can kill sections of cambium or sap wood under the bark leaving dead sections of trunk. Looks like there are some small, white fungal fruiting bodies just below the scar in one shot. This could be a cause or possibly a secondary infection after the initial damage.
Root damage - Sap stops flowing through a section of bark which then dies. damage related to roots will start at or below ground level but can be traced back down the trunk to a dead or dying root. Occasionally removing a branch can cause similar lack of sap flow and result in local bark die back, usually directly below the branch.
Broken branch - sometimes a branch will fall taking some bark with it. Usually not hidden so easily spotted.
Animal damage is usually quite obvious because they remove the bark and damage is easily spotted and immediate.

 

[Maiden69]

Thanks, We built and moved into this house in September 2020, so I guess that damage was from the installers or probably at the nursery. I will clean out the bark and see what I can do with it, I may treat it as a bonsai and score and cover the cambium to see how much I can help it heal. It is very breezy here, we are located at the top of one of the highest hills in my area. I wanted a different tree but this was what the builder had at the moment... I may look at what's available in the local nurseries and see if it would be better to swap for something else. I have a huge juniper behind our fence and several live oaks. So having the red oaks (I think they are sumac) was nice with the evergreen behind them.

Pic as the house was being built... they killed several of the juniper trunks, they look awesome in winter against the green foliage behind. I have been fertilizing them, they look much happier than the rest of the trees around us.





The trees Thursday morning after the winter "storm"

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Thanks, We built and moved into this house in September 2020

Did you plant that tree that year? Possibly in spring or summer?
Lately I've been seeing a lot of wrapped trees with new plantings all around cities. I asked some arborists about it and they told me that bark from trees can burn right off if they were grown in shaded locations and are planted in full sun. I think I've heard some bonsai nurseries talk about devastating losses after some hot weather because the bark on their trees on the sunny side was cooked.
Especially trees with thin bark in a darker color.

Could very well be the case here.

 

[Maiden69]

Did you plant that tree that year? Possibly in spring or summer?
Lately I've been seeing a lot of wrapped trees with new plantings all around cities. I asked some arborists about it and they told me that bark from trees can burn right off if they were grown in shaded locations and are planted in full sun. I think I've heard some bonsai nurseries talk about devastating losses after some hot weather because the bark on their trees on the sunny side was cooked.
Especially trees with thin bark in a darker color.

Could very well be the case here.

The tree was planted in September by the contractors, along with another 3. Two of them are fine in front of the house, the other one has a small crack at the base. These are landscape trees grown in a field, but I don't know if they are in a shaded location. There are 100's if not 1000's of them in our neighborhood, and I haven't heard anyone else with this issue so far,

 

[Shibui]

Sunburnt trunks can be a problem here too. When orchards prune trees hard or regraft they usually paint the trunks white to reduce sunburn of the bark that has to suddenly cope with full sun.
I've also seen sunburnt trunks in bonsai. One grower had dead sections on many trunks after a particularly hot week - all on the north and west (sunny) side. One of my Japanese maples suffered dead bark on trunk and main branches after defoliation 2 summers ago.
The results in the photos don't look quite right for sunburn but there may be differences in species and location.

If these trees were large when planted they have probably been handled by a machine or with slings. Both can damage bark if the operators are inexperienced or careless and that damage is typically close to ground level where the trunk is usually handled when loading, transport and planting.

 

[Jzack605]

Almost 100% damage from planting.

 

[Betula1]

The tree was planted in September by the contractors, along with another 3. Two of them are fine in front of the house, the other one has a small crack at the base. These are landscape trees grown in a field, but I don't know if they are in a shaded location. There are 100's if not 1000's of them in our neighborhood, and I haven't heard anyone else with this issue so far,

Suggest you contact the contractors and request replacements or a refund .If only planted in September they should still be covered under defects liability period. You could also request the developer replaces the other mature trees they killed on site during the development which should have been protected from changes in soil levels and root damage caused by excavations.