fire blight
Fire Blight,
Fire blight, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora, is a common and frequently destructive bacterial disease of pome fruit trees and other related plants. Pear and quince trees are extremely susceptible. Apple, crabapple, and Pyracantha species are also frequently damaged. Fire blight occasionally attacks hawthorn (Crataegus species), Spiraea, Cotoneaster, toyon (Photinia species), juneberry or serviceberry (Amelanchier species), loquat, mountain ash (Sorbus species), and other related plants. Fire blight infections can destroy limbs and even entire shrubs or trees.
In spring, disease symptoms can appear as soon as trees begin active growth. The first sign is a watery, light tan bacterial ooze that exudes from branch, twig, or trunk cankers (small to large areas of bark killed by the pathogen during previous seasons). The ooze turns dark after exposure to air, leaving dark streaks on branches or trunks. However, cankers may be inconspicuous and infections may not be noticed until later in spring when flowers, shoots, and/or young fruit shrivel and blacken. When the pathogen spreads from blossoms into wood, the newly infected wood underneath the bark has pink to orange-red streaks. Fire blight may also spread into wood surrounding an overwintering canker. If the bark is cut away from the edge of an active canker, reddish flecking can be seen in the wood adjacent to the canker margin. This flecking represents new infections caused by bacteria as they move out to infect healthy wood. As the canker expands, the infected wood dies, turns brown, and dries out; areas of dead tissue become sunken, and cracks often develop in the bark at the edges of the canker. The pathogen tends to move in trees from the infection site toward the roots. In fall, leaves on infected pear shoots often turn red and then black.
Treatment google A very weak (about 0.5%) Bordeaux mixture or other copper fungicide applied several times as blossoms open can reduce new infections, but will not eliminate all new infections nor those already existing in wood.
Sorry so big. I just dealt with it.
