Consultation and Diagnosis For Your Trees

Anthracnose is the name for a group of diseases caused by several closely related fungi that attack many of our shade trees. Symptoms include small dead spots on leaves, dead leaf margins and tips, brown areas along leaf veins, premature defoliation and twig death.

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Crown Gall is a disease resulting from infection by a bacterium that causes galls to form at the base of the stem or root crown or on other plant parts. The bacterium infects only through fresh wounds. The disease is most damaging to trees because the galls are perennial and increase in size with growth of the tree. Movement of water and nutrients is severely impaired by galls. The early stages of gall formation can be difficult to distinguish from normal callus tissue.

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Black spot fungus begins to develop in the spring when temperatures reach into the sixties. By the time temperatures reach into the seventies, the disease is running rampant. It starts with tiny black spots on leaves, no bigger than a pinhead. As the fungus develops, those black spots on leaves are ringed with yellow. Soon the entire leaf turns yellow and falls. It can attack any plant with fleshy leaves and stems if the conditions are right.

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Crepe myrtle bark scale is relatively easy to identify. It is one of the only scales known to infest crepe myrtles. Adult females are felt-like white or gray encrustations that stick to crepe myrtle parts ranging from small twigs to large trunks. When crushed, these scales exude pink "blood"-like liquid. On new growth and in heavy infestations, the scales may be distributed more uniformly on the branch.

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Spider mites are not truly insects, but are classed as a type of arachnid, relatives of spiders, ticks, and scorpions. Adults are reddish brown or pale in color, oval-shaped, and very small (1/50 inch long) - about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Immature stages resemble the adults except only smaller. Mites live in colonies, mostly on the underside of leaves, and feed by piercing leaf tissue and sucking up the plant fluids. Feeding marks show up as light dots on the leaves. As feeding continues, the leaves turn yellow, and may dry up and drop off.

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Galls are formed by insect/mite feeding or egg-laying activity. Either mechanical damage or salivary secretions (introduced by insects and/or mites) initiate increased production of normal plant growth hormones. These plant hormones cause localized plant growth that can result in increases in cell size (hypertrophy) and/or cell number (hyperplasia). The outcome is an abnormal plant structure called a gall.

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The small, silk weaving that resembles a Christmas tree ornament on your favorite tree or shrub is not decoration. These bags protect the caterpillars, or larvae, pupae, female adults and eggs of bagworms. Bagworms attack trees and shrubs including evergreens such as arborvitae, cedars, cypress, junipers, pines and spruce; and broadleaved plants such as apple, basswood, black locust, boxelder, elm, honey locust, Indian hawthorn, maple, various oaks, persimmon, sumac, sycamore, wild cherry and willow. Although bagworms are not abundant every year, once a plant is infested the insect becomes a persistent problem unless controlled.

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Aphids can appear white, black, brown, gray, yellow, light green, or pink. Adults are usually wingless, but most species develop a winged form when populations become crowded, so that when food quality suffers, they can travel to other plants, reproduce, and start a new colony. Aphids usually feed in large groups. Symptoms of Aphids: misshapen, curling, stunted, or yellow leaves, leaves or stems covered with a sticky substance, galls, sooty mold which can make branches and leaves appear black. Aphids may transmit viruses to certain plants, and also attract other insects that prey on them.

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Fire Blight moves to branches where young twigs blacken and curl. Blighted twigs may first appear water soaked. Sunken areas of cankers appear on branches and main stems. In wet weather a milky-like, sticky liquid oozes from the infected plant.

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While there are several different kinds of leaf miners, for the most part, their looks and plant damage is similar. Leaf miners tend to be non-descript black flies. The flies do not directly cause damage to the plant; instead, it is the larva of these flies that causes the problems. Most of the time, this pest is identified by the leaf miner damage. Frequently, it appears as yellow squiggly lines in the leaves. This is where the leaf miner larva have literally bored their way through the leaf. Leaf miner damage can also appear as spots or blotches.

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Slime Flux is characterized by light or dark streaks on the bark that originate at a crack or wound and run vertically down the trunk. Slimy, sometimes foul smelling liquid bubbles out of the tree and runs down the trunk.

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Scale insects are common pests of shade trees and shrubs. They are often overlooked or ignored until tree or shrub branches "mysteriously" start to die. Upon closer examination, these branches are likely to be covered with small bumps that are actually scale insects. They damage plants by sucking out plant juices. From a damage standpoint, there are two types of scales: those that excrete a sugary liquid (honeydew), and those that do not. Honeydew is both a nuisance and a threat to plant health. Plants become unsightly when this liquid becomes a food for black fungus called sooty mold. This mold can shade leaves and reduce plant growth.

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Hypoxylon Canker is a fungus that causes cankers and death of oak and other hardwood trees. The hypoxylon fungus will readily infect the sapwood of a tree that has been damaged, stressed, or weakened. 

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Leaf Scorch is a systemic disease which invades the xylem (tissues that conduct water and nutrients) and clogs the tissue, thus disrupting the transportation of water. Leaf Scorch causes the leaves of the tree to brown prematurely in midsummer, and by late summer and fall the leaf margins will be entirely brown.  Sometimes the dead brown tissue is separated from the healthy green tissue by a thin yellow border. If more leaves continue to turn brown prematurely over time, the tree will die from lack of energy production due to the green chlorophyll not being able to perform photosynthesis. 

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When prolonged drought occurs in the East Texas/North Louisiana piney woods, an increase in IPS, or pine engraver beetle, may occur. Engraver beetles are small, brown to black, cylindrical insects that attack and kill pine trees by feeding off of and laying eggs in the inner bark. Engraver beetles usually breed harmlessly in fresh logging debris and weakened trees and are not considered a major pest. However, when trees are stressed due to drought or other conditions, engraver beetles may attack and kill a significant number of trees.

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Needle Blight affects conifers, most notably in our area the pine tree and Leland Cypress. The blight usually results in dramatic browning and dropping of the foliage beginning on the lower branches. It rarely attacks upper branches on conifers so the tree might not immediately die. In most cases the disease makes pines in landscapes unsightly and pines in Christmas tree plantings unmarketable. Successive years of severe needle infection can result in tree death.

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Oak borers are a pest of many species of oak trees across North America. They spend a portion of their life cycle inside oak trees where they excavate holes through the wood, causing permanent damage that decreases the value of the timber. Other insect pests, such as carpenter ants, timber worms and carpenter worms, enter through the holes made by oak borers and cause additional damage to the tree. Oak borer infestations that are left untreated often cause tree mortality.

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