Is this something I should worry about? Some of the bark on this young lapin cherry looks a little rotten, and I can see some sap. Tree has appeared healthy with lots of growth, and a few cherries this year.
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Looks like a canker down the whole left side. Bummer.
Out of curiosity is that the south side? Just wondering if the canker is secondary to winter sun scald.
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West side, though it gets some decent late afternoon shade year round. What action would you take? Copper fungicide? Try to cut it out? Do nothing and hope the tree heals itself?
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I’m not sure. I haven’t had good luck with cankers. Hopefully someone else will chime in with some proven ways to fight them. I would probably try cut it out and wash-out the area with diluted bleach water or vinegar water, or something…not saying it’s the right thing, just what I would try.
The next problem is that it looks like you may have a bad fork just above that, meaning a place on the tree where it will split in two vertically once the weight is right. If that is the case…sometimes the best thing may be to just trim it below the canker and let it regrow a new single trunk. Seems drastic though, so maybe wait to see what others say, and take another pic a bit higher up. My Lapins I used to have did the same thing with the bad fork and I split it while just testing the fork and putting a bit of weight on it, less weight than even a moderate crop load would have given.
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@cis4elk The branch on the left is cut off just above the photo. It died with the buds just starting this spring, (probably because of this same canker problem, I now realize). My other Lapin looks like it has a canker, too. When I got these trees they were staked very tightly, and these bad looking spots were between the stake and the trunk. I assumed they were wounds from the stake
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Are these a lost cause?
Could be … you may be able to let them hang on this year, then cut back to ground level, let the rootstock grow from scratch and then graft to it the following year. Since the root system is probably big and good you can get back to a big tree faster that way.
It has been a bad year for canker for me, my Sandra Rose was culled a few weeks ago since it got canker at the base, and my heirloom cherries all have canker and are going to get culled. I am going to do with them what I mentioned above, let them hang on this year and then cut to the ground in spring and hope they sprout back from the roots.
Getting canker-resistant varieties is very important in many parts of the country… Black/White Gold and Regina have been awesome for me, and every other variety I have tried has had problems.
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Hate looking at these pictures. But then I have a 30 foot tall Cherry tree all hollowed out by cankers. It suckers badly and I’ve tried grafting on them. Don’t know if my grafts will grow through the field of suckers.
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Yeah these are hard to look at. About 12 years ago I planted a ‘Stella’ cherry and one of these lesions developed on the south side of the lower trunk. I was very worried. It eventually opened into a large exposed section of barkless wood. Fast forward. Today the tree is doing great, and pumps out so many cherries each year that we are overwhelmed. In the intervening years I have planted several more cherry trees as back-ups, but so far this old tree is still wonderful.
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That’s awsome. I have no expectations for these trees, but if they make to 12 years that would be great!
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Yeah I would just wait and see. And in the meantime think about what tree would replace it if it croaks. Or plant a back-up just in case!
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Trees starting to look bad again. Not sure if I’m overwatering, underwatering, they just hate the sun, or if the canker issue is slowly killing them. The one in the sunnier spot looks really bad. The one in partial shade looks better but still has some yellow leaves. I have heavy soil with lots of clay, but the top six inches dries out quickly (especially this time of year: zero precip, humidity in the single digits, and 90 degree days). I’m watering the shadier one every 7 days, and the sunnier one every 4-5 days.
The tree will be dead pretty much soon. But do not worry, mix a cup of emulsion paint with the powder used to make copper spray (Dicopper chloride trihydroxide - Wikipedia or Copper oxychloride) say 2-5% solution and paint the tree where you see the diseased tissue. It will take year or two but it will help. Copper spray is organic and it is cheap to buy, it will dissolve slowly and penetrate the tissue. I have cured trees worse than that one which had only tiny strip of live tissue on them. It will be fine, just do what I suggested. And post pictures if possible. Preferred is white emulsion paint.
Cheers
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Sweet cherries are native to cooler climates, they are not fans of heat at all. It could be a combination of heat and canker doing them in. Look around the tree for an oozing area, that will confirm you have canker.
@Lex → Thanks for this post! I’ve always wanted to try mixing copper powder with paint like you described. It’s great to hear someone has had success with it. I was going to use diluted latex paint, but I’ll try the emulsion paint instead if I can find it. I’m not 100% sure what it is but I’ll look it up. I might also try this method on my plums for black knot. Right now I don’t have any knots, but that is sure to change.
There was lots of oozing last year, almost none this year. Trunks still look really ugly, though.
There are some old sweet cherry trees in my area, though peaches and apples do tend to do better in this climate in general. I think a shadier spot would have been a wiser location. I will try the copper!
Dulux paint id literally emulsion paint. You can dilute it with water. Other interior design paints which you CANNOT use are acrilic and oil based ones. Yous your Duluz and mix with copper powder.
Another solution, more long term is to put a few real copper nails into the trunk. they need to stick out about half an inch. Rain drops will slowly dissolve the copper over the years and release ions onto the trunk. This will prevent canker and other fungal/bacterial diseases. But you need real copper nails ( not galvanised copper steel nails) or you can make them yourself from thick copper cable.
Hope this helps
Cheers
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