Sick sycomore?

[BlueRidgeMark]

I think this is a sycamore. It drops those nice ball shaped seedheads. I have several nice specimens on my property - all in the 70+ foot range. I'm concerned about their health, though. They are all showing random dead leaves, from top to bottom. Bug? Disease? Treatment? Spray is probably out of the question, as they are too big.


Tree trunk.


Tree trunk.


Leaves, alive & dead.

 

[diltree]

Mark

Mark, do the leaves appear to be wilting in some areas.....has there been any abnormal activity in the area that could cause a change in the environment??? If there have been no enviornmental changes and there is wilting this may be Sycamore Antracnose, a fungal based disease, that can be controlled with alamo applications via trunk implants, soil-injection, or by microinjection.

www.dillontree.com

 

[antigrassguy]

I would lean more towards a petiole borer as the sycamore is closely related to the acer family and not showing typical signs of anthracnose. IE. canker formation(including bud and twig mortality), shoot blight, and leaf blight. Or are there cankers on these trees or others close by? If borer than petiole will be blackend where they have chewed. Usually not an issue in Wisconsin as they only hang around for a couple weeks, then dissapear for a few years. Could be differnt beast in your neck of woods though.

 

[diltree]

Mark he made some good points....do you have any better pictures of the abnormal leaves??? Maybe we can come to a definitive diagnoses, with better pictures of the leaf surface. From the pics provided it looks like dieback and defoliation, the two major symptoms of antracnose in a sycamore. Has it been a cool spring in Virginia, cool tempetures in the spring lead to inreased outbreaks of sycamore antracnose

www.dillontree.com

 

[antigrassguy]

And pics of petiole as well, from wilting leaves. OT running those, I call them dingle balls, thru a chipper really messes with my breathing or ability to do so. Durn near shuts me down. Not sure what it is but it is nasty.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Pictures!

 

[antigrassguy]

It would appear that it ISNT a petiole borer and may be early stage anthracnose. I would be leary to make the call at being a 100% for sure, not having been at the site my own self, but that is what it would appear, from here. Diltree would be 100% on though, with the alamo.

 

[diltree]

Im going to say im 90% that this is sycamore anthracnose...If you treat now you can stop the progression


www.dillontree.com

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Sorry, I forgot the alamo!


Sorry - I had to say that


So what's an alamo? (Other than the obvious historic place, of course.) Where do I get it, how do I apply it, and how much do I have to pay someone else because it probably requires a license to use?

Would more pics help? If so, on what should I focus?

 

[diltree]

Alamo

Its a fungicide that has been successful in treatment of many vascular diseases caused by fungus( Oak wilt, Dutch Elms, Sycamore Anthracnose) There are a few forms of application, and many companies that offer Alamo products. Do a web search, and go from there, but it may be cheaper and easier to contact your local arborist..or bartlett, especially if we can get %100 diagnoses and they don't have to come out and look at the job, they would just have to show up and treat the sycamores.

www.dillontree.com

 

[Ax-man]

And pics of petiole as well, from wilting leaves. OT running those, I call them dingle balls, thru a chipper really messes with my breathing or ability to do so. Durn near shuts me down. Not sure what it is but it is nasty.

Anthracnose of the leaves, don't worry about it Blue Ridge, leaf infections rarely need treatment, if the fungus gets the whole leaf the tree will produce a new one . Your lucky to have leaves this time of year, I have seen this disease so heavy some years that the tree doesn't get leaves until mid to late June.

Somewhere along the line Sycamore Anthracnose has been misnamed to me. Anthracnose on any other tree species is a fungal infection of the leaf. Sycamore Anthracnose that causes the dead twigs is more of a canker disease of the woody part of the tree that hits more or less new wood that was formed the previous season. Should be Sycamore Twig Canker disease or something like that.

Trivia, for you guys that suffer from the breathing disorder that comes from working on Sycamore. It is the leaf hairs ( trichomes) ?.that get dislodged from the surface of the leaf when it is moved around or run through a chipper become air borne and get inhaled. I asked the question on a thread at the old ISA site why Sycamore causes difficult breathing, an arborist from the UK replied with the answer about the leaf hairs, I would take his word on that because Sycamore is more common on that side of the ocean as Maples are on this side. I don't work on Sycamore during the summer at all, I must be really allergic to them in other ways because even in the dead of winter I get bothered by them a little.

Larry

 

[suaf]

Larry - you mentioned some Sycamores don't leaf out until mid or late June sometimes. I am in northern IL. All of the sycamores are probably around 30% leafing at this point. I usually recall they leaf out late but is this extremely late and possibly due to our sever drought in IL last year?

 

[Ax-man]

Suaf,

I don't consider this time of year extremely late for a Sycamore to begin full leaf expansion, if this darn disease wasn't so common on Sycamore then yes it would be late. Sycamore Anthracnose has gone through it's cycle for the year and the Sycamores will be out in full leaf by mid July. Some Sycamores in our area are about to that point, others are not.

Drought doesn't count IMO as a stress factor for a Sycamore, if you ever see a Sycamore in poor health it is usually due to some other factor. Sycamores are at the top of the list of trees in Illinois that can withstand the urban enviroment and still flourish. Other than this anthracnose disease I don't think there is anything else that really bothers these trees, they seem to be able to cope with this disease year after year, not every tree species is capable of this, that is saying something for their hardiness.

 

[suaf]

Thanks - very interesting - how in the world does a Sycamore manage to put on the growth it does if they don't even fully leaf out until mid Summer? Quite a tree! I wish there were more in my area!