I noticed it has lots of cuts in the trunk. Just noticed this year. But don’t know when it happened. It has never produced an apple to completion for me once in 15 years. What a disappointment.
The neighbor let me plant 7 fruit trees on his lot. All of them were duds and had to be removed for one reason or another. It was terrible. The best growing tree was a Red Heart plum. Grew fantastic. Giant tree! But it was covered with black knot and cut it down. I seldom if ever got any plums from it.
Besides the cut up Zestar there is a moral of the story here…
If neighbors let you use their land, don’t experiment, only plant tried and true trees. I don’t have the nerve to ask neighbor to make more holes and stumps on his property.
edit…
2nd moral of the story.
This is why you have many trees and varieties of trees. Lots of backups.
Don’t you have cougars around there? My cat made marks just like that on some of my softer-barked small trees and cougars do claw. Cougars in eastern KS were denied by Wildlife Dept. for years until photo evidence piled up that they couldn’t ignore.
likely a bear marking its territory. they can be very destructive on fruit trees. seen that many times on old farmland on abandoned orchard trees. porcupines can be equally destructive but usually looks like a buck rub. not slashes like that.
I’m in Tri-State area. OH - WV - PA. Don’t know what we got here. I’ve never seen bears or big cats here. But we got coyote and I never seen them, I only hear them.
I don’t think that’s animal damage, its desiccation, likely caused by disease. Over winter those areas die off and dry out, and the bark recedes back and cracks. I’ve seen it on some of my trees with the same profile as described; lack of vigor, weak lateral development, often areas of rough bark that on my trees I’m concluding was fire blight. I see it on trunks that were buried under snow, when the snow recedes there’s a crack. It’s not always fatal, but it’s a tree I need to keep track of. I find it beneficial to trim back the dead bark to live cambium (there’s often a pocket of unattached bark).
