Tree Disease Signs & Symptoms
Our Certified Arborists believe that early disease detection can be an important part of protecting your trees. By providing our tree disease gallery as a resource for our clients, we hope to help your trees as soon as the signs of damaging diseases appear. While this tree disease gallery is a useful resource for beginning the process of accurate tree care, it is important to have your tree diagnosed by a tree care professional. Contact our Certified Arborists if you suspect that your trees are being affected by one of the tree diseases below and we will start a custom plant health care plan for your trees.
Apple Scab
- Fungal disease of ornamental crabapple and apple trees
- Leaves will develop small brown to olive green spots
- Most common in spring and early summer
Treatment:
- Fungicide treatment 2-3 times per year
- Annual treatment is necessary
Needlecast
- Fungi that affects Pines and Spruces
- Browning can develop slowly, over several years, or rapidly, depending on spring weather conditions
- Fungi attacks needles as they emerge and is especially affective with moisture from rains or heavy dews
Treatment:
- Can be controlled through a protective fungicide spray program
- Spray treatment protects the new growth that arrives in spring; it can take a least 3 consecutive years of treatment to have aesthetic beauty return
Dutch Elm Disease
- Fungus that is transmitted from one Elm to another
- Symptoms typically arise in late spring or early summer
- Leaves on outer branches will curl (wilt) turn gray-green or yellow and then brown
Treatment:
- Trunk injection
- Sanitation pruning of recently infected branches may help
Tar Spot
- Black spots on maple leaves
- Will not kill your tree, just a cosmetic issue
- Easily spread from tree to tree each year
Anthracnose
- Caused by fungi infecting newly emerging leaves in spring
- This disease will not result in the death of your tree
- Systemic fungicides can be used to combat the disease
Oak Wilt Disease
- Dull green/bronze leaves
- Careful to not injure/trim Oak trees from April – July as that is the most common time of infection from the spore-carrying beetles.
- Remedies must be acted upon quickly in order to save the oak trees.