Question:
I have a beautiful ten-year-old red Japanese Maple that was gorgeous last year. After the leaves turned brown, the maple shed two-thirds of their leaves around the middle of December. The balance of the brown and curly leaves just hung on the tree. Finally, I stripped them off by hand in late January. The branches, stems, and limbs look healthy, and they show no signs of shriveling. My other Japanese Maples shed all their leaves as they have always done in the past. I’ve now been told that it may be sick, but he wasn’t sure why. Do you have any idea what is happening or wrong with this Maple?Answer:
- I wouldn’t be overly concerned about your Japanese Maple. The partial leaf drop while not typical from prevues years, is not a sign of a problem.
- A plant genetic characteristics and climatic conditions influence leaf drop. So, something changed but it’s hard to identify, and you couldn’t affect any change anyway. Manually stripping off the old leaves, as you did, does not harm the plant.
- I think your information source could have been alluding to a problem called Verticillium or Fusarium Wilt. Both of these diseases are vascular problems that plugs up the major plant arteries for food and water during the growing season.
- When the flow of water is interrupted, we’d find leaf curl in sections of the canopy similar to water stress, wind burn and leaf drop.
- Another sign of the disease is both the small and larger stems turns black.
- The decline usually occurs over several growing seasons. Verticillium or Fusarium Wilt are very common in Bay Area soils, and unfortunately, we have no chemical controls for it.
- Susceptible plants and the disease can coexist for many years before it manifests itself. Camphor, Olive, Wisteria, Pistache along with tomatoes and other plants are likely to Verticillium and Fusarium Wilt. Curly or shriveled leaves, especially during the dormant season, is not an indicator of Verticillium or Fusarium Wilt.
- From your description, I doubt that you have either of these problems.
Question:
I have a palm tree that is about five to ten years old. It has grown to between five and six feet tall. I would like to cut this tree down to three feet. Is this possible or will the palm die?Answer:
- You typically control the height and width of evergreen plants by pruning. But this is not the case with palm trees without causing some adverse effect.
- Palms grow vertically with few to no lateral branches. Their growth is centered in the top or terminal section of the plant.
- If you shorten the main or any stem, it would probably die, but you could encourage the new shoots to develop from the base of the plant.
- The new shoot(s) would not grow overnight, so you would have an extended period where it would be visibly unattractive or odd looking.
- This might be a mute point if there is a new shoot developing at the base already.