Juvenile poinciana problems - case study

Eric Frei

Lady buys 3 advanced poincianas from a farmer style guy, follows the planting advice verbatim.

Two years later, trouble. Trees not doing so well.

Here's the first two pictures, what do you think is going on?

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Bernard Keays

Ekka,

I'm not exactly sure (really need a better look at the tree & understand its history) but my best guess would be sun scald or physical abrasion to the trunk during lifting, transport or installation. Do you know if the tree was nursery or field grown and how was it lifted?

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Bernie

treeseer

roots infected -> trunk infected

willem

I've seen these markings as part of the barkdisease in chesnuttrees but also when Honeyfungus attacks a rootsystem. There is a disturbance in the fluidsystem of the tree and juices are pushed outside through the bark.
Not a good sign!!!

Eric Frei

Here's a shot of the 3 trees taken at same time as above pictures (11 July 2008).

In these pics you'll notice they were buried and I restored grade to root flare and pruned a little, I did cut off one girdling root maybe 1/4" dia on one of the trees. When I was restoring the grade and removing soil there was no hairy roots whatsoever in the soil above grade, these were truly buried.





And mulch it back up.



I did some treatments (secret ) and gave the customer a weekly to do list.

Returned this weekend, now at this particular time of year poincianas are yellowing and dropping leaves, which is good news really.



The coincidence of the lesions with the approximate place a person may have stuck a sling for lifting is interesting, customer cant recall how they were lifted but does recall they did arrive a bit damaged (broken branches etc) lying down in the back of a truck.

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willem

If you plant trees that deep, you will get trouble. They probably didn't know what to do with the soil coming out of the hole and chucked it back on there when finished with planting.
Good job ekka, hopefully the bark will also recover now growing conditions are improved.

Eric Frei

And here they are today, beautiful.

Sad part is now that they've bounced back and your advice + treatment overcome the ailments + lawnman/gardener + seller + incorrect arborist advice from another.... I just got dumped and the gardener now looks after them, pruning and all.

Yes, another arborist who failed to return said the trees had "parasites" and was going to do some sort of drench for parasites.

The infection here was fungal.

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Done it

Top job,

Consolation is, you know you did it.

Often people comment on my work and my response is "well it's not just for you, I have to drive past here all the time"

The killer is when you drive by and it's gone.