No idea what happened. A pear tree and a red delicious apple tree died a few weeks ago and the leaves turned black and withered overnight. The other apple tree was fine 3 days ago and now all the leaves are brown and dead. We've had rain and it has been watered a few times a week.
Anyone have any idea how this could have happened?
by presumingpete
16 Comments
What part of the country do you live in?
Were they planted 3 years ago?
Apple scab?
What’s going on at the base of the tree? Girdle? Some sort of fungus? It looks off
The root flare should be exposed. A buried root flare is the #1 killer of newly planted trees and usually shows up year 3 or so.
I would guess fire blight.
They have damage at the base of the trunk, likely from rabbits or a rodent.
Ants, deer, or some other animal possibly? The bark damage appears severe enough to cause girdling, which disrupts the trees vascular system impairing its ability to transport water and nutrients between the roots and canopy.
My grandfather had a several peach trees transplanted to his property a few years ago (big ones, using a tractor based tree spade). The trees seemed to be doing great and then out of no where half of them were dead just like this due to deer rubbing off all the bark.
Not relating to your trees but, I just wanted to give you a heads up that the pretty pink flower in the back there is purple loosestrife which is a highly invasive and extremely destructive to wetlands. Here’s an [Ontario.ca](https://www.ontario.ca/page/purple-loosestrife) guide on it. I recommend replacing it with a similarly beautiful native such as Fireweed. Hope you find out what happened to your trees!
Hm. Is that a wetland behind your yard? Judging by the invasive purple loosestrife everywhere I’d wager yes.
If that’s the case, it’s possible their roots rotted out if you had a wet few weeks and the water table was high.
Anybody sorry for mosquitos or bugs in your yard? Or weed killer? Idk honestly that is strange
Any black walnut trees in area ?
My favorite plum tree did that.
Sun scorch
Call an arborist
What’s going on at the ground level. Looks fireblight to me.