Sunburn on Japanese Maple trunk

[jquast]

We had some hot weather a week ago and I just noticed some sunburn on the trunk of a maple of mine. Is this anything to be concerned about? There is still green wood under the burn sugesting that the cambium is still alive but this small portion of the trunk is slightly brown.

 

[TheSteve]

Are you sure it's not just the bark maturing? For a trunk to sunburn I would think the leaves would be scorched completely off the tree,

 

[jquast]

The Steve,

A few leaves on top of the tree, maybe a dozen or so, have the scorched look to them and the brownish section on the trunk showed up at the same time. This is on a tree that has already begun to show the signs of a mature tree where the bark is beginning to change from green to the whitish gray of a 15-20 year old specimen.

 

[TheSteve]

How about a picture? That way everyone can see it.

 

[JasonG]

Trunks on maples actually sunburn fairly easy. It will typically come with a summer prunning, you do a heavy prune exposing a section of the trunk and then it gets blasted by the sun while the bark, or skin is tender. Happens at the farm quite a bit, also had it happen in the yard before.

Another thing that happens is you will have a nice warm day in early spring that will get the sap flowing abit. Then that night it will freeze, killing off that section that the sap was flowing in.

And Steve, you can burn the trunk and have the leaves look perfectly fine.

Jason

 

[Pine Barron]

Rub a lil SPF 50 on it. *grin*