sorry for lack of caps and formatting my shift keys are broken. i bought a few more trees this year to add to my home orchard, including apple, peach, apricot, and plum. this was in early april, and i planted the trees immediately upon taking them home. they were in burlap bags inside pots, and looked healthy. one was a 'superior' variety plum, which was in full flower bloom at that time. however, since planting it has never produced any leaves, while all other trees i have have sinced bloomed and produced many leaves. the wood still feels springy, but i wonder if it has somehow died. i do not think that it was mishandling on my part because i planted nine trees the same way and all others were fine. is it possible that the shock of planting combined with a couple of light frosts since that time has killed the tree outright/ do plum trees normally produce leaves and flowers at the same time/ any other suggestions as to what might be wrong here/ if it does not produce any leaves, is it possible that it will next year or should i just rip it out of the ground now and replace it/
i cut one of the branch tips off a few inches down to see if it was still alive, and i still see some green but the inside is more gray than white. i started digging around the roots and found a giant nest filled with thousands of tiny ants and hundreds of 1/4in yellow eggs. i am guessing that this is the reason but i never heard of ants affecting tree roots. i know they will harvest aphids but there aren't any leaves for the aphids to be eating. i lightly checked the roots around a few other trees that i purchased from the same vendor and found ants around those roots also, and one had a small amount of sap leaking around the base of the trunk just below the soil line, similar to what peach tree borers leave though less exteme. is it possible that there are borers in the tree and the ants are feeding on the sap/
