That looks a lot like the winter damage I’ve seen here and in central WI
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I think I just want to be in fire blight denial. I haven’t been able to do any spraying yet this spring. The weather just hasn’t cooperated. Hopefully I can get some copper sprayed this weekend.
Here are some pics of what I’ve been seeing on my hosui. I looked closer at my chojuro and I see some concerning areas, but just about every young shoot and spur is like this on my hosui. I pruned out a lot of areas already.
The bark is soft and when I scratch it, it all looks dead.
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Most Asian pears are susceptible to fire blight. Some more than the others. Hosui is one of the more susceptible ones.
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Still looking into this. I came across some more information regarding psuedomonas and pear trees.
This link has some general information on the disease and and some images of dead blackened shoots that don’t have the Shepard’s hook typical of fireblight.
Also Asian pears are more susceptible than European pears. “While Pseudomonas typically causes only a blossom blast in European pears and rarely spreads into the wood, blossom blast in Asian pears often runs down the stem, killing entire branches. Shoots become water soaked and then turn black as the bacteria move down the stem. Young trees may be killed to the ground.”
They also have this disease susceptibility chart for some Asian pears which might be useful.
We also hit -30f this winter so cold damage to the young shoots is also a possibility.
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Did you have conclusion of what the causes?
I have few similar black spots on branches/spurs. I am not sure it’s winter injury or FB.
I also discovered today some of my pear leafs have black edges over night. I am wondering if it is FB too. We do have a lot of rain laterly.
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the leaves would bother me…especially if it showed overnight…but I am far from an expert. I am also more than ready to over-do things. So the tree I took photos of earlier now looks like this:
On the bright side it has nice green bark and I will try bark-grafting Olympic or ji lin back onto it.
This one got cut back too, although I am thinking it may have been just freeze-damaged…I wasn’t sure and went all-in. It is aggressively pushing new, blemish-free growth though.
This one (below) has me a bit concerned, but I just saw it this morning:
Yes, focus is horrible, but at the end of a couple leaves they have the black tips as well…I’m not sure if cold can partially kill embryonic leaves and give a phenotype like that, or if it is indeed FB.
Btw your carmine jewel is flowering right now…maybe 20 flowers, so no pies, but hopefully I can save 3-4 from the birds and at least taste one.
I am glad that CJ is doing well.it’s in better hands.
I went out cut the spurs off and the ones with black leafs. I also sprayed copper all over the tree and other pear trees, grapevine, apricot… I may have gone over board too. On the label it is said can be used upon petals fall in lower dose.
Whatever you got, I got too. I posted pictures in pear diseases ID thread. I sprayed immunox on the trees today. It’s been very wet lately.
Yes，I saw your post, but I don’t know what it is for sure.I hope it’s not FB. This spring is wet, many days in low temperature
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Do you also have strong wind recently? My young Asian pear tree leaves often display such black edge when it’s really windy.
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Yes, it was windy yesterday. Thanks for sharing and made me less worried about FB.
Annie,
I am not worried about that blackened leaves. It could get beaten up by strong wind like @JamesWNY said or frost bite, etc.
I’d be more concerned about the 2nd pic of blacked limb. Keep an eye on that.
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A little black on leaves is typically just wind or other environmental damage. It particularly happens to new growth. If its fireblight or scab etc you know quickly because it spreads. Pear branch tips hit with fireblight need broke off asap. One picture could be fb but its out of focus and i cant tell. This is fireblight Late season Fireblight
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For my Asian pears as spring progressed and trees began to wake up the cold injury became more evident. At first only the terminal buds and flower buds were dark black and soft. As spring progressed more and more areas showed evidence of cold injury.
My younger Asian pears only pushed new buds from below the snow line so I cut them back hard much like markalbobs images above. My hosui basically died to the ground and with my chojuro the trunk is alive and there are signs of dormant buds starting to push out.
Even my Euro pears are mostly only pushing leaves on the one year old growth. All the spurs and buds on older growth shows no signs of life. Hopefully they’ll recover and leaf out further later spring or early summer.
As for the blackened leafs I wouldn’t worry about fireblight so much mainly since the weather has been so cold. One possibility since it has been so wet and cold is a fungus that didn’t normally effect pears, like maybe anthracnose. Check on any other trees (particularly shade trees) in the neighborhood and see if they have similar leaf symptoms.
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Clark, I cut all the spurs to their main stems and sprayed with Bonide copper. This is first time I am alert of Fieblight. I sprayed all my trees with copper every spring before bud break. I did so earlier this year as well. The difference in this year is the copper product, I am getting lazy and used Bonide copper. In the past several years I always mixed my own Bordeaux. Maybe my mix was stronger in copper, I didn’t have fieblight on my pear trees.
Another thing I want to ask you about. On the same tree , I grafted Mishirasu asian pear. It grew well with developed three branches and flower buds this year. About a week ago, I noticed one branch seems stopped growing, its flower buds just stopped developing. About 2 days ago, I saw leafs on another branch all droopy and curved inwards. The leafs acted like they reserved the process of growing out. Today the leafs perked up a little but still are not completely extended out. All the leafs are green. My question is what might be the cause of the leafs loss vigor , or where should I look for the possible cause of this problem?
This is the picture of the branch. it looks better than yesterday
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That damage appears to be from excess water or rapid growth / or insects. I had the same thing happen in this thread where i tbudded a pear T-budding tutorial. It grew out of it in time but at first i thought it was signs of the graft failing.
This was with the sun
Hi Annie,
Only one of the three branches from this one graft looks like this like? The other two from the same graft are healthy?