A cherry tree (white gold on Gisela 5) I planted last year is developing a gummosis spot on one of its main branches. You can see it in the picture below.
This gummosis area is near a cleft graft I did last year. The tree is doing well and the grafted branch shows strong vigor. The sap is hardened. I touched it and it felt like hard candy and the surface was non-sticky. The area immediately surrounding the gummosis is neither sunken nor swollen.
I would like to ask for some help. I don’t know what would be the best way to deal with this. I do not know if it is infection by bacteria, fungi, or wound caused by environmental factors. Currently, nothing has been done to this tree. My thought is to use a sharp grafting knife to open up the area, inspect, and scrape away all the infected area until the bark is green and clean.
I’ve dealt with this a few times as well, stone fruit oozing sap is fairly common. For me the action I take depends on how bad the situation is. I’ve cut out larger bacterial infections with success, but I’ve also left smaller oozes alone and they subsequently cleared up on their own. You could carefully cut away a small section of the outer bark under the sap and then act accordingly. If it’s green and healthy looking then you can probably leave it alone.
Thank you! That’s what I am planning too. I am a little weary of it spreading. The weather was very windy and rainy for the days leading to this discovery. I was told if I opened it up I would need to “cauterize” the wound, and an open wound at a graft union could lead to problems in the long term. Dilemma…
Based on my understanding, this is a symptom of another underlying issue. It’s worth thinking about what that might be to decide which route to proceed with.
Yes. The recommendations I have received so far can be summarized to the following steps:
do nothing until you see further symptoms or spreading infection
wait until the weather is dry
excise and scrape off any infected tissues OR remove the branch completely
The weather here is pretty wet right now. So I can’t really do anything other than monitoring it. Dry weather won’t come until later next week. I am taking one picture everyday to see if anything is changing. It rained today and I sprayed the area with some copper-oil mix.
I very much want to preserve the branch because it has a graft on there. But I was also informed of the risk an open wound near the graft union could lead to issues down the road.
