Collected Crab Apple

Crab Apple

Collected this past Sunday. Again, with Austin and Harry I need to chop this down a bit.








Does anyone know what these bumps are?

Ask Nina, but the bumps look like infectious galls. Collected members of the Rosaceae are tempting, but are likely to be Typhoid Marys of infection & borers.
Iris

I found a few a grub or two in the soil along with a few termites. If that helps??

For the orthographically curious, crabapple is one word in the US & two words in UK.
What you want to watch for is holes in the trunk with sawdust hanging out, which means borers. Most of these problems are incurable with pesticides available to the public. If I were collecting a crabapple or hawthorn in the Northeastern US, I would air-layer a clean branch, rather than dig it up. I would never touch a tree with visible galls. Keep it away from the rest of your collection.
Iris

One cause of galls on crabapples is the woolly apple aphid. Here's a link from the University of Kentuky: http://www.ca.uky.edu/ENTOMOLOGY/entfacts/ef219.asp

Thanks for that Will. I will have to look at the leaves that have just opened to hunt for some soon to be chemically altered fuzzys.

I can't find anything on the net showing a picture of what I have going on, on this tree.

I have found this. http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljuly99.htm

I was expecting to see woolly apple aphid galls, but this doesn't especially look like that (to make sure, examine the cracks around the galls for "wool"). Another possibility is crown gall, caused by a bacterium. Crown gall is difficult to diagnose- you'd have to get a Cooperative Extension office to do it- and impossible to treat. It won't necessarily harm the tree, but it could disfigure it, and you'd have to make sure never to use tools on other trees after working on the infected one without sterilizing them.

Or it could be nothing. Your photos aren't that scary. If I were you, I'd wait and see. But sterilize your tools.

Nina, as always you have been very helpful. Thank you very much for your time and efforts. I will take a closer look and see if I can give any more info. I will see what appears as time progress.

When you say sterilize, are you referring to autoclaving the tools? I do have one available to me on a daily basis.

Alcohol or Chlorox will do.

I have found some fuzz. It is very small and located in this area of the tree within one of the tiny cracks.

Is there a solution? Or is this tree headed for the fire?



I have found this http://agsci.psu.edu/tfpg/part2/insects-mites-web/wooly-apple-aphid





I do remember a bit more now being on the bottom, above the soil line, clustered around one of the galls. I thought that it was a spider egg sack. There was three of us moving leaves and twigs away from it, hanging off the side of a steep hill so, when it came time to dig it out, I think they were knocked off...

I can barely see that, but it looks like a mealy bug.

I'm talking to colleagues to see if there's any new recommendations about crown gall. Normally, crown gall is untreatable unless you want to inject systemic antibiotics into a tree, which is costly. You can cut off the growths and sterilize the wound (and yes, I'm talking about bleach or rubbing alcohol here, not autoclaving). But if if any of my colleagues tells me something different, I'll pass it along.

Little update.

This tree never woke up from its winter slumber. It weakened close to the end of the summer even when I thought that it had recovered nicely from its issues. I didn't do much to protect it during winter and it received a few showers of pesticide showers during the summer to control the wooly apple aphids that occupied it. After I established that it was no longer alive I up rooted it. I found many, many clusters of root gall all over the system. I read that the aphids make their way into the soil and feed on the roots as well as the upper parts of the tree.
It may or may have had another form of root gall.

I learned from this experience to pay closer attention to the materials that I am collecting. To take the time and really look to see if there are existing pest or infections.

I do not see any evidence that this one tree affected/infected any other trees in my collection. :crossing my fingers: