One of my 5 Apple trees, which is a Gala has these branch distortions on some tips. I cut most off but this year there’s still one. I did spray some copper and sulfur separately last Winter/Spring thinking it might be fungal and it seemed to help
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Injury would be my first thought.
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It is not a disorder. Strange things happen to plants.
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To me this looks like fruit buds turning into growth buds/shoots.
Because of that sharp angle I would consider removing it sometime. A heavy fruit load above that will break it I think.
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I wonder if you cut this off and grafted it to rootstock, would it be a sort of pre-built open center tree? I’m not a fan of open centre trees, but still.
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The weird thing is 2 years ago, those severe curls were on about 75% of the tips. I cut almost all off and it didn’t reoccur. That tree is the one that the aphids absolutely destroy new growth and last year I used dormant oil with copper for the first time and the aphids were practically nonexistant. I wasn’t sure if weather or oil was the savior, or a combo
Could it be caused by aphid damage?
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From aphids maybe? It had a heavy aphid infestation the year those irregular branches showed up…way worse aphids compared to the other trees
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i think the same as DroppingFruit. Looks like a fruitbud/spur grew a few shoots.
Might be that the aphid and other things slowed down top growth. While root growth continued. Now leaving you with exces vigor. Should correct itself.
Although i would prune the branches with poor angles. (either head to turn back to fruiting wood. Or thin to remove)
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I have seen this on several old apple and plum tree at my current location. I don’t know what caused this, as the property was vacant for many years. I took the apple tree out as it wasn’t producing and I will likely remove the plum tree down the road as well as it is on its last legs being likely 80+ years old.
I tried doing some research on this topic and I found some info that seemed to point to some kind of infection. I can’t recall what the type or name of it was, but that was enough to convince me to remove the non-productive apple tree. If others that are far more experienced with growing than myself feel this is from damage they may know best. However, it couldn’t hurt to look into this further.
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