Has anyone come across ornamental cherries in the North Vancouver area where a portion of the leaves look dead and they are accompanied by new growth? Is this a disease (systemic) or could they have been damaged from frost shortly after they came into leaf? Thank you for your input!
What's the significance of that in terms of the future health of the tree? Does it just affect this year's leaves? Almost all the ornamental cherries I've seen in Vancouver have maybe 5-10% dead leaves. They had a hard time this spring with the cold wet weather.
I'm adding some photos to demonstrate the brown rot that's affecting so many of our trees. Here's a Kanzan on Comox at Bidwell. One of the symptoms, aside from the brown leaves, is that the dead blossoms may stick to spurs and twigs, which is definitely noticeable on this 'Shirofugen' on Cardero at Comox. A lot of what's written about brown rot concerns fruit trees, talking about the effects on this year's fruit. This ehow page and other websites suggest either spraying with a fungicide or pruning off the affected areas of the tree. Since it's not like either will be done for our 11,000 'Kanzan' and many thousand other street trees, are next year's blossoms likely to be affected?
Had a lot of something very similar (if not the same) here a few years ago after a particularly cold, wet spring. The trees were all OK again the next year, so I'd not worry.
