I have a few Honeycrisp apple trees (on Bud-118 rootstock) that aren’t looking very healthy. They have these little yellow dots all over the leaves.
I believe the trees are about 8 years old (I inherited them) and have fruited very little if at all so far in their lives. The last few years they have had heavy scab which I am trying to get under control, and this year the scab is the lowest it has ever been and really isn’t too bad, but I’m afraid these yellow spots are going to cause problems.
I’ve attached a couple of pictures so you can see what I’m talking about. Does anyone know what this is? Thanks.
My Honeycrisp leaves look mottled like that as well. I thought perhaps it was something wrong with the tree, a nutritional deficiency, etc. According to the others that grow Honeycrip these leaves are normal ( if that is the right word for odd looking leaves) for this variety. I had tried adding different minerals to the soil with little or no effect. Once they get like that, they stay like that. This spring the leaves did not look that bad, however, later this summer is when they started looking like that.
My tree is in the fourth leafing and it has done this from year one. This is the only apple variety that has leaves like this in my entire orchard. I have 5 other trees in the same general area. The rest of my orchard has no other trees with leaves looking like this either.
Yeah, the yellow is normal for HC by midsummer, but the white spots aren’t. I assume white spots are the possible whitefly damage Alan was referring to.
Thanks everyone. I don’t see any whiteflies on the leaves so I’m thinking it is probably just the ugly folliage you are talking about. The picture makes the spots look a little more white than they actually are – in reality they are more yellow than white I’d say. I hope that’s all it is.
