Arbutus: Arbutus Unedo Transplant Damage

About a month ago we transplanted an A. unedo which was about 8' tall. Over the last few weeks the leaves at the crown and sides have turned brown and dry, this is not just the top leaves it travels down the branch. However there are still areas of the unedo that are green. Can we prun back the dead branches and save the tree or is there an alternative procedure that coud help save this tree????

Robert

 

are you saying you dug up an 8' Arbutus and moved it, or are you saying you have planted 1 and its leaves are going brown..............if you have dug 1 up and moved it, i'd say it has very little chance, pruning may help, but i doubt it........it's always difficult to give advice without seeing the plant.

 

Oscer.........Yes we did dig it up and transport it to our property. As I said there is still green on the inner and lower parts of the tree but the outer and upper leaves are brown and dry. If pruning should we cut back to the base of the branch, alternately should we simply leave it over the winter to see if it regenerates?
Robert

 

Its now a 50/50 situation, do you prune and risk increasing the stress on the plant for a short period of time, maybe enough to finish it or do you leave it and hope it recovers..........the answer is neither of the options are very good, we have had one of the worst droughts here in the UK for many years, and its given me the opertunity to experiment with the prune or not to prune, and the answer is, it doesn't seem to make much difference, if a plant has reached permanent wilting point, there is nothing you can do (several philadelphus pruned and not pruned are dead) a few that were pruned servived, but i couldn't tell you if that was because they were pruned or just because they weren't as far gone as the others.
The Prunus incisa Ko Jo No mai nearly all recovered, half were pruned and half not, again it didn't seem to make any real difference.
So for future reference the answer would be, prepare the plant well in advance of its move, prune the top at the right time to reduce the size of the plant, then in Autumn dig a trench around the plant 7-10 times the trunk diameter away from the plant, this
will prune the roots, encouraging new roots within the area of soil surrounding the plant, fill the trench with compost, and leave for a year, the following autumn dig the whole thing up and move it. A fellow gardener friend of mine moved a substantial Japanese maple using this method.
As a word of caution, evergreens are more difficult to move than deciduous plants so i take no responsibilty for any deaths of any plants being moved.....buy a small plant from a nursery and watch it grow is the best thing to do.
oh nearly forgot about pruning your Arbutus, if the stems are black and obviously dead, i'd say prune them off, reason is they will just be food for any diseases that happen by the plant.
If anyone else has thoughts on this, feel free to post up :D

be sure and return with updates Robert, it will help for future visitors.