Looks like it is a fungal issue. I wonder if it is relegated to warmer/more humid climates
You have to think region by region my friend. In Minnesota this summer was very rainy. I had 3 types of plants side by side with fungal diseases: lilac (dropped their leaves), gooseberry, and even the sugar maple had fungus on their leaves. My particular town is overrun with a juniper given the moniker “eastern red cedar,” which spreads Juniper-Apple Rust disease to many Family Rosaceae plants – half the items in a typical orchard.
We’d have to collect a survey with one question being region, but we don’t have enough members here to get statistically significant results. Even with region, too many respondents wouldn’t think about what types of trees are present in their area. I am far outside the native range for American Chestnuts but the blight that was noticed in year 1904 has spread to be carried by oak trees here, so when American Chestnuts are planted here they die within 35 years.
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I don’t know anything about the climate in Minnesota, and I don’t claim to. I was combining two relevant quotes and expressing a curiosity based on my own experience growing in MD where I live. I don’t know anything about growing sea berries
I’m very familiar with cedar apple rust in theory, but I purposely don’t grow any susceptible fruit trees/shrubs as a result. I have several eastern red cedar on my property in MD that are carriers. the Galls are quite pretty when they are open on a rainy spring day, particularly if you don’t know what they are.
So far the biggest challenge I’ve had in keeping seaberries alive in my PNW location has been animal damage. I’ve seen no fungal issues, but young plants seem very prone to losing their roots to some sort of underground animal which eats them. The root chewing has been quite extreme in some cases, but I’ve found if I can get them to a large enough size then they seem better able to tolerate any ongoing root loss. Aside from that, I’ve also learned that sapsuckers like them and can completely girdle the trunks. Fortunately they tend to girdle high enough up that you can protect them by allowing them to retain low branches which will continue feeding the roots in case the main trunk gets girdled cutting off downward sap flow.
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OMG did they develop a Sea Buckthorn that isn’t murderous?! When I was a kid growing up in Ukraine, our house in the countryside had one of these. Very interesting taste, one of those things that is just unique and hard to compare to anything. But harvesting those berries was a very… trying experience, to say the least. If I were to pick the most murderous tree or shrub, obviously excluding any outright poisonous ones, Sea Buckthorn would definitely be among the top contenders (with a close competition from Barberries and some Gooseberries).
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Man has never seen a trifoliate orange tree obviously. For that matter, a riled up honey locust can give conniptions to most cactus.
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Haha yes, I’ve seen some oranges and I suspect I know what you mean and I’ve seen the locust. The difference though is that for the former the fruit is big enough and for the latter it’s just a tree and you don’t need to get close and intimate with it to wiggle out tiny squishy berries one by one.
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If you look up this thread you might see the video on picking sea buckthorn. There are various tools to be used to make the harvest easier.
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I want to see what happens when a harvester tries metal salad tongs to scrape seaberries off branches into a dish pan.
https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-6047282/farberware-classic-stainless-steel-locking-tongs.jsp
did you see the post on this higher up in this thread?
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