White fuzz growing on Dorsett apple tree

General Fruit Growing
#1

This is a picture of one of my Dorsett golden trees, it’s a little fuzzy (no pun intended). The tree itself is healthy other than the appearance of this white fuzz like substance on the trunk. Strangely enough my other Dorsett had the same thing earlier in the year, but it’s not on any of the other trees. I treated it with an insecticide and it went away. If I run my fingers across it, it has almost a sticky feeling. I’m guessing is some sort of larval insect stage…Any thoughts?

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#2

mealybug?

#3

Not sure what the bugs are but …did you plant two trees in the hole or is your tree suckering?

#4

Around here that would be woolly apple aphid. See if there are purplish aphid like insects under that fuzz. If so it’s WAA.

#5

the tree is suckering…I don’t have any pictures from when I first planted it, but that was probably half the size if not less…Maybe it will produce roots and I can get another tree off of it…

#6

thanks…looking at some picture online it does bear a pretty close resemblance to the wooly apple aphid…hopefully that is not the case since my understanding it they can actually kill the tree if they get into the roots.

I’ll try to get a closer look this afternoon. whatever the case it seems like I need to address this as soon as possible.

#7

Wooly aphid. The tree is suckering badly too, you need to whack that bad boy back to one trunk.

WAA won’t kill a Dorset Golden (too vigorous), but can stunt it. The aerial infestations are resistant to spray, which tends to bead up on the waxy coating. Your tree is small enough to just wipe them with a cloth. After the tree is older and has thicker bark, a butane torch lightly passed over them sets the waxy coating on fire like gasoline and they perish a satisfyingly horrible death.

Sadly, there’s nothing you can do for the root infestations other than plant WAA-resistant rootstocks, which usually have Northern Spy in their heritage. We use M111 for this reason.

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#8

thanks for the info…I’ll be sure to remove that sucker…the folks at the place where I bought it said to leave it alone, so I didn’t really know any better…

for clarification purposes here is a better picture of what it looks like up close…with the fuzz and then after I sprayed it…they are definitely purple…

I’ll wipe them off…

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