2,4 D can definitely kill woody plants, but killing a tree this size would be unlikely.
Assuming you hired guys who were applying it as recommended, it would be rare to kill a large tree.
But if it had that kind of effect, you’d notice symptoms relatively close to the date of spraying. Did you observe anything like that? Twisted leaves? Wilting of new growth? Parts of the tree dying?
2,4 D passes out of the soil in a month or two, so unless you noticed something pretty close to when the guys sprayed, it’s probably not 2,4 D, or at least not by itself. Is it possible it could have weakened the tree, opening it up for a disease/pest? I think that’s more likely.
Well with the way the damage is, it is the roots, and the very first thing that comes to mind is Huanglongbing. It happens one branch at a time. leaves will look like zinc deficiency (green veins, yellow on rest of leaf). Nothing can be done, all the trees will die if this is what you have.
That’s really awful someone lost all their trees that way. But yeah, I’m not disputing 2,4 D can kill trees, especially smaller ones. Just saying it if it was the culprit, it would have had to have been a pretty large dose to kill such a big tree, and you’d start to notice something bad very soon after spraying, since 2,4 D’s half-life in the soil is like 6-7 days…it wouldn’t be something that would happen where you’d have no idea until months after the fact.
I had about 15 fruit trees killed and another 12 severely damaged to the point where some are still screwed up 2 years later. But just as @VSOP says, mine were all fairly young trees (4.5 years or less), and they certainly showed signs about 10 days or so after being hit. Those signs included very strange, twisted growth occurring in many of them, along with leaves just dropping on a few. But it was pretty much either the whole tree was affected or none of it was- I didn’t see cases where some parts were hit and others not. But I did have trees side by side where one would show damage and the other wouldn’t-but usually they would be different kinds of fruit so again, not the same as what you’ve got here. THe state environmental department came up and tested over 100 trees and other plants on my land and did a huge investigation and determined my neighbor had fogged my whole property with 2-4,D. But it didn’t look too much like this…but who knows. THanks for tagging me, @mamuang. Hope I helped.
Oh my goodness. Just hearing about this makes me so angry and upset on your behalf. I think it’s really inspiring that you haven’t given up this hobby in the face of such a devastating setback.
Oh, Trust me, I spent about 3 months wallowing in extreme anger and wanting to just give up. You might enjoy seeing the thread and photos of how it all happened and the aftermath:
I followed and posted on @thecityman 's thread as it happened. The timing with mine was coincidental at the least, as I had used the lawn service for some years and never had any issues, but then got some unexplained death on this tree, which made me wonder. It did coincide with a lawn treatment in which 2-4,d and a few other poisons were used. The curious thing is, if that was the culprit, no other trees were impacted (including my other orange tree immediately next to this one). This tree has always had some issues with peeling bark and even some mushrooms/fungal growth on the trunk… I’m wondering if the spray just put it over the edge.
It produced a lot of fruit last year, none of which had any greening. I’m in Northern California too, so hopefully no HLB here… even though the psylid is.
Lawn service use chemicals and majority of chemicals are toxic for the environment. Roundup is horrible and have killed lots of bees. Many weeds can be rid off using non toxic household products, salt is a good one for dandelion.
Those two are completely different. Vinegar is essentially a water solution of acetic acid, CH3COOH, which disintegrates very fast into basic compounds (H2O and CO2), so it does not have any long-term effect. It’s a weak herbicide though. On the other hand, salt is a strong herbicide, but sodium and chlorine ions will stay in the soil for a very long time (until leached away by rains over many years) and will be harmful to any plant in the area.