Fruit Trees Fungus or Moss

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agarg

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Santa Rosa CA
Folks

I am taking a lot of interest in the garden and fruit trees. There are two fruit trees in the backyard (one pear and other apple) and both of them have a green leaf like scale on its trunk, limbs and all over. Pls see the picture attached. My gardener was saying he wanted to spray salt water to get rid of them. I think salt water is no good and so I came hear from Yoda of gardens directly. Please advise,

Anil
 

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its a fungus. ithnk it causes frog eye in apple trees. but you need to hit it repeatedly with a funguscide. ivory soap disolved in a bucket of water might work. its been a few years since i went through master gardeners classes. you might want to look at a dormant oil after you get it pruned. but before bud swell.
 
its a fungus. ithnk it causes frog eye in apple trees. but you need to hit it repeatedly with a funguscide. ivory soap disolved in a bucket of water might work. its been a few years since i went through master gardeners classes. you might want to look at a dormant oil after you get it pruned. but before bud swell.
Fungus? Well I'll be!
 
its a fungus. ithnk it causes frog eye in apple trees. but you need to hit it repeatedly with a funguscide. ivory soap disolved in a bucket of water might work. its been a few years since i went through master gardeners classes. you might want to look at a dormant oil after you get it pruned. but before bud swell.
I will check this out. Thank you.
 
I will check this out. Thank you.
It is not harming the tree and does not need to be sprayed with anything. It does not cause any diseases.
Your gardeners suggestion of spraying salt water was a poor one and would have been harmful to the tree.
Copper based fungicides used to prevent and control fireblight will kill lichen, but I would not spray them solely for that purpose.
 
Jed, Ath, and others,

Our gardener is hard working guy but I suspected that he is ignorant and hence I came here to get more educated about it. I am grateful for all your comments and help and will participate here more. Happy to have found this site.

Wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year.
 
But as Marty Raney says, many call this "Gasoline on a tree" as far as fire risk?
And we live in a wildfire bowl. Nearly every year we have some huge fire around us....We got rid of all Juniper (we had many many many) just to reduce risk. Juniper is called firebombs around here. This Lichen may be readily flammable but likely not a store of calorific values. So we will just keep a watch. And also these trees are at least 70 ft away from any structures.
 
Lichen is algae and fungus cooperating. It doesn't hurt the trees, though it may grow more industriously on one on which the bark is breaking down (I remember *something* from college biology! )
 
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