Hope some of you recognize this and advice possible action. I am starting to observe this only within my Persimmon Trees and one got so severe that it pretty much killed 70% of the cyan part (this is a Grafted tree). The leaf (pic attached) displaying darkness throughout leaf veins off of my Coffee Cake Persimmon, but this was the same symptom that pretty much wiped off the Chocolate Persimmon. I’m observing that in my other Persimmon trees as well and need to take immediate action. Initially I was ignoring it thinking these were stress due to the frost (we had funky cold spell over this past Winter here in Georgia *7b) and noticed sign of stress within other fruit trees as well. Anyway, I’m now almost positive this is some sort of fungal breakout and need to treat with something beyond Neem Oil treatment that I usually apply to fight leaf miners and other pests. I am kicking myself for ignoring/procrastinating on taking action as the tree that had the sever damage had full flash of growth after the end of Frost and then started to show this sign, leaf started to wilt and fall off (eventually with branch dieback). So as I crop through the dead branches, I noticed inside under bark to be dark, dried out.
I usually practice standard precautions such as use alcohol to wipe off pruners after each tree, discard diseased leaves, twigs etc far from the tree (trash) etc, so these must be airborne.
Thanks for any feedback. If you recognize the disease, and have a recommendation for treatment, I would like to get as much information you can provide.
A fungal disease isn’t going to follow the leaf veins like that. So I’d say it’s not a disease issue. Not sure what it is but persimmons can be very sensitive to cold both winter and spring. It sounds like your trees suffer cold damage in winter. If that’s the case all you can do is cut out the parts that die and hope they grow back.
My tree was killed back by cold one yr. But grew back and now looks great. That’s not always the case and the tree can show a type of delayed response to cold.
There is a possibility of a delay incompatibility of the graft and rootstock. It also could be the initial of stage of sudden death syndrome. I had one American persimmon under stock that was 3 inches in diameter and I tried to graft Kaki and Hybrids for the last three years. The grafts took and grew for 2 to 3 months and dark veins appeared in the leaves and they died. I think in my case was incompatibility.
Despite many attempts, I ended up loosing my Chocolate, Coffeecake and Yamato Hyakume
Tried various things suggested (including Cleary 3336F Fungicide which someone swear by worked for his situation after encountering situation similar to mine) but alas, they left me.
Tony, perhaps graft incompatibility. In my case, I obtained those well established Grafted Trees (very thick caliper from Dave Wilson Nursery stock) from California so I’m assuming the rootstock wasn’t even compatible with Georgia soil. Even though they did quite well (in Yamato case, grown large enough to fruit for me even and come back strong the next Spring) may be incompatibility with the whole Georgia Ecosystem.
Dave Wilson persimmons are on Lotos root I believe. I would get some other rootstock next time, it looks like a rootstock/graft issue to me, and it could have also been related to the cold. Persimmons are odd trees, not like other fruits… they do strange things. I have a Chocolate that has been near-dead for five years now, but its still hanging on with a few branches. I’ve been trying to graft it to other stocks and every year they fail after growing well for awhile.
