Hi, I live close to UBC and have a 50' cedar tree in my backyard that is turning brown from the ground upwards. The branches at ground level are getting bare. I started watering the tree 3 times a week but it is not making any difference. I bought 5 bags of dirt and covered the ground around the trunk and stuck some fertilizer sticks along the dripline. Still no change... Any ideas what I can do to find out what's wrong?? Thanks, Mike
Can you post some photos? Pics of the whole tree, and the foliage. Is the condition similar to this one?: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=33146 Or to this one: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=27610 Sorry, but neither of those will help, they'll both make it worse, particularly the extra soil.
If these branches are dying due to bugs, blight or shading watering will have no effect. Also if drought injury is involved the watering will not affect the situation unless it is effectively undertaken. Many soils here are by now, despite the lingering winter this year in a dustlike condition as is usual for July on many sites in this region. Copious watering may be needed to re-wet such ground. Unless you already know you have gotten good deep wetting of the soil profile around the tree it might be a good idea to dig some holes and make a visual inspection. Native western redcedar (Thuja plicata), the usual "cedar" of locally based discussion often discards old interior foliage conspicuously during summer drought conditions. If your tree is one of these and only the interior foliage of the lower branches is dying, and not all of the foliage all the way out to the tips then this annual phenomon may be what you are seeing.
Are there any remnant Port Orford cedars around there? It's one of the first to come to mind when I think of big tree plus dying at the same time, and someone refers to a "cedar".
I have seen a number of western red cedar (Thuja plicata) flagging but also overall browning and sort of 'wilting'. My usual line of thought is water issues, these trees grew the last 50 or more years in a rainforest situation and the last ten years or so we have been getting longer drought periods (just from my memory, no scientific research at this point) during summer. Currently we have had one of the driest Julys on record. As Ron B insinuated, you cant medicate without diagnosis. It might be a water issue, it might be an insect issue and it might be a fungal or other issue... The more evidence you can provide the better the diagnosis can become.
I would like to thank everyone for offering their ideas. The tree was turning brown so fast I brought in an arborist this morning and he confirmed firstly it's a cypress tree! (ok, I'm not a gardener) and it has a common root fungus that is fatal. :( It's a shame because it was such a majestic tree.
Likely, it is somewhat common here. You might be able to isolate the disease if you can send some tissue samples to the ministry of agriculture lab out in Abbotsford.
Why not post a photo of the tree. Some flagging is considered natural to some people but to me it is not a natural phenomenon. Around here is usually caused by Tip moths, Shoot moths and Spider mites. These aggravating critters but generally, by themselves, not lethal to the tree issues are magnified and exacerbated along with lack of water along with heat and wind stress. Coastal Redwoods sloughing off tip and in some cases the deadened undergrowth three to four times a year around here is not a natural event, although we take it for granted we will see it happen in dry and warm climates. The shedding of deadened undergrowth due to lack of light penetration is however a natural occurrence around these parts. Dryness from lack of water or sustained drought conditions does not always cause a water mold fungi to come about out of no where. A 50' tall tree by this time has already learned to live with organisms capable of producing a wet rot or a dry rot - Phytophthora sp. are fully capable of producing both forms of rot, even a gummosis causing wet lesion form we can see in some Citrus. Lack of deep water or water stress and perhaps Mite damage may be the principal cause of the lower limbs to become barren. We see it a lot here on Colorado Blue Spruce as well as Thuja and Chamaecyparis. Much of the time internal browning is caused by Spider mites as well. The issue here is later on a rust form fungus can come about from the Mite damage and can easily spread throughout the tree which is common to many Cryptomeria. Browning from the bottom upwards does not bother me as much as browning from the top downwards will. The latter makes it a whole lot tougher to save the tree, especially when we may have a few Flathead borers working inside the tree or the tree came under attack from some Engraver and/or Bark beetles (check the older side branches for a series of small holes in the outer bark). Jim
Thuja plicata aso shows a compartmentalizing response to drought, the upper crown dying but the rest remaining green. Root rot of Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) when fatal tends to produce an entirely dead crown, the whole thing going brown throughout. Phytophthora is not the only genus causing failure of this species in local cultivation. Note also that water molds such as Phytophthora are not actually fungi but rather more like brown algae.
