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Maple tree problems
By John
Fulton
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[MAY
12, 2004]
Here we go again! It's just into May
and many area homeowners are reporting problems with their maple
trees. Many times the problems begin on one side of the tree and
have the symptoms of brown or dropped leaves. What could be the
problem? Well, anthracnose is back again.
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What's anthracnose? It's a disease
caused by a fungus. It's present most years and affects many
different plants. On trees -- get this -- it affects only
good-quality shade trees. That includes maples, oaks, ash and even
sycamores. Silver maples are not affected by anthracnose but are
affected by other leaf spot fungi (that's plural for fungus).
Anthracnose can affect shade trees in
three different ways. The first way is by affecting small twigs. In
this type of infection, small twigs are actually killed by the
fungus. The second way is affecting buds. In bud infections, the
buds are killed. The third way is infecting leaves. The leaf stage
is the most common and shows up as dead areas along the tips and
edges of leaves or as dead spots between the leaf veins. As these
dead areas get larger, the leaves fall to the ground.
There is no cure for anthracnose. Once
the fungus has infected the tree, we just have to ride it out. We
might have prevented the disease by protecting new buds and leaves
before the infection, but that isn't very practical on very large
trees. This would take a fungicide application covering the entire
tree every 10 days or so from when leaves first expand from the buds
until nighttime temperatures stay over 65 degrees.
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this article]
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That leaves us with good news and bad
news. First, the bad news is the infections are just starting and
will get worse. There is nothing we can do but keep the trees in
good growing condition (water when dry and add a little fertilizer).
We can continue to have leaves infected for quite some time.
The good
news is that rarely is the disease a killer on established trees.
Generally the worst that happens is the loss of the small twigs, if
that stage was infected, or having a bare tree in your yard for a
few weeks. I say a few weeks because generally when leaf drop is
severe, a new set of leaves comes out within four to six weeks. What
usually happens is it takes more energy to shoot a second set of
leaves, so that is why the water and fertilizer can be important.
[John
Fulton,
Logan County Extension office]
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