Please help identify a "persistant" leaf problem: mineral, roots, fungus?

Frank,

I don't know of any water testing lab's in your area, do a google search or phone directory. Look for a lab that is certified with a "standards" system such as NATA or ISO. It is some surety that the results are credible.

regards

Paul

Is this rust or some similar fungus on my Carpinus?

Are you on well water?

If you are on city water, you shouldn't really need to worry about odd chemicals. Public water systems routinely test their water for a whole host of undesirable chemicals and send the results to the state or the federal EPA. If your water is drinkable (no matter the taste or hardness) there shouldn't be anything in it that will damage plants -- Chlorine and Fluoride -- often required by local law -- will not hurt plants in the amounts put into drinking water.

If you are on a well, however, you probably should find a chemical laboratory to test your water. Your county health department will have names of reputable labs.

Andrija . . . your question probably should go ito another separate thread. There could be a number of causes -- weather, excessive sunlight, disease, insects, etc.

Hi, Andrija! I happen to know that Carpinus trees are very susceptible to water stress if you forget to water them. Don't ask me how I know this. But it could have been a hot dry day. It doesn't look like a disease: it looks like some abiotic cause. Watch the tree carefully.

Andrijar,
This is also very similar to what I believe to be a fungus that attacked my carpinus starting a couple of years ago. I found bravo fungicide(chlorothalonil) worked extremely well on my tridents but did not seem to do the job on the carpinus. Last year I started using kocide blue extra (COPPER present as cupric
hydroxide) on the carpinus and it worked well.

I can understand why people may not see this as a fungus. The leaves can look burnt and or simply die back in a necrosis fashion. I went through many suggestions of the problem but the one person that proved to be right was Matt Ouwinga.
He took one look at my tridents and said Fungus I have seen it before plenty of times. Spray spray spray he siad.
Now the carpinus was similar in the way it was affected yet also different. I am still unsure if it can actually be the same fungus that attacked the tridents as it seems that is very improbable being a different type of tree
The carpinus could get gradual necrosis (dead leaf tissue often black) starting at the tip. Leaves could be small with burnt looking tips. I am not sure I got the leaf curling but I while check back on my pictures. It often only attacked certian branches of the carpinus like it had only just caught the fungus which was very probable the way my garden was organised. It may help to see a pic of the whole tree.

I am not rulling out what has already been suggested but it seems to me that alot of the tree still looks green and non "water starved"
One main difference I found from trident to carpinus was that the carpinus stopped growing where as the trident just kept trying to push new growth which never seemed to be able to get going.

I will drag out some pics of before and after treatment. It was pretty undeniable to me that it solved the issue, at least temporarily, as Matt said Spray spray spray as I found at least with the tridents it came back some time after treatment. The bravo label suggest that a light frequent spray is better than a heavy occasional spray. Yet I went through several sprays that did not work before bravo was recommended by a pathology test. I showed Matt the pictures of the treated plants and he said they where very healthy. The only change I had made was treatment with Bravo. To me there was no question of what solved the issue.
I got lucky with trying Kocide blue extra on the carpinus as I tried it on a whim, only a few came out with the fungus last spring and after a spray or two of that they returned to healthy growth.
(now I remember why I started using the Kocide Blue extra)
Most of the tridents had returned to health the year after. The few that where still affected I tried treating with the Kocide blue extra as I was looking for a less toxic treatment than the Bravo (nasty stuff) Although it worked better on the carpinus it did not seem to do the job on the tridents. Got them through the year but I will have to start with Bravo agian next spring on those still affected.
Don't forget all the winter cleaning (weeds leaves benches) and also winter fungus treatments this should help alot in the future.

Hey guys/gals.

I had one trident last year that showed the same curling UNDER and browning at the tips. If you look closely you will see tiny pin prick black spots. It hit me the same time black spot hit my cork bark elms. This year has been tough for this fungus, wet cool spring followd by huge heat and humidity. Daconil has helped, but must be used over a few weeks in several applications. I also used a rose disease control systemic for this. Its getting better but the heat doesnt help.

Practical experience tells me its a fungus.

Preventive measures are in order next year.(systemic). By the way, not removing affected foliage will allow the fungus to persist. I believe its the same fungus as blackspot. The leaves of a trident simply react differently than elms. Just my opinion.

I should mention, that tridents placed 20ft away being watered with the same water showed NO signs of this fungus. There was definately an "epi-center" of activity this year that came from one tree.

Sorry for late response and thanks for answers!

Been thinking of updating my posting here for a while now ...

After losing well over 1/2 of my trees last year/this spring I went to my local bonsai nursery, Meehan's Miniatures, and discussed my problem with Martha and Hugh. They are wonderful people and spent a considerable amount of time talking with me about this. One possible problem we discussed was high alkalinity in my well water. They had problems with this some years ago with their trees, causing a general malaise and growth problems. I was able to check this quickly as I had kept salt water aquariums in years past, where high alkalinity is considered beneficial, and had a test kit handy. My water's alkalinity measured 300 ppm. Apparently anything above 80 is considered unhealthy for watering plants. This was interesting to say the least as in addition to the acute problems of last year my trees had just never quite thrived like other peoples on this site seemed to and I was at a loss as to why. Water issues also fit with the problem scenario last year when we had two solid months of drought and high temps and I was relying on large amounts of tap water to keep the trees alive. To top it off I had recently modified my planting medium to have considerably more Turface, which may hold more salts.

So I installed a large rain barrel this spring and have been using only it for watering. So far we have had enough rain to keep it full. My trees are generally growing better than they ever have before. I had some problems with blackening leaves on some maples early on, but they all seem to have grown out of it at this point. This doesn't necessarily explain the symptoms I was having, which were experienced by even some of my landscape trees which were not being watered by well water. However I am willing to accept that it may have been why my trees succumbed so easily to whatever the root cause was.

I have been very conservative this year by acquiring almost no new trees and cutting back my focus on this hobby accordingly. But I haven't gotten out entirely and still have a few trees I consider pretty good, so if things continue to do well I may pick things up a bit more next year.

I have been following this thread closely. I to have this same problem for many years and lost more plants than I want to remember. I strickly think this is a water quality problem. Veldog I have been playing around with Bonsai for around 10 yrs and container plants for much longer, in all that time I have come to the conclusion that there are just some plants I cannot grow in my growing environment. How do you combat this problem find the plants that will grow in your environment. Many indiginious plants are much more hardy thay ones traditionaly deemed as Bonsai material. Single out these and work them and forget the rest until you can deciper the water quaility problem you are haveing. Thats what I am working towards. I now am in the proccess of having my water analized in the hopes of solving this problem.
I feel for you and know your pain.

All this is my personal and most humble opinion.

Mitch

Thanks Mitch and I'm sorry for your difficulty as well. Inspecting my landscape maples tonight I found one that is pretty definitely still suffering from the same malady, so I really believe there is a pathogen involved at some level. But the water quality was almost certainly a factor in the deaths. The rain water seems to have worked well for me, but the classic solution for high alkalinity is acid injection. It's not that difficult to build a system to do this, and what they have done at Meehan's, but I would rather not if I can avoid it.

Veldog
Just recently I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. During the conversation she said not all public water systems are the same and all must be checked. Especially in the case of speciality growers like bonsai african violets and orchids, serious fish aquarium keepers. She owns a very nice nursery and landscape buisness near by. She told me they have to inject sulfuric acid into all the water the consume to nutralize the PH . They too have problems with thier maples and azaleas. She also said that if you can smell chlorine in the tap water you will also most likely will have a residual salt (sodium) build up problem. It seems some municipalities use a system that spilts a sodium molicule to produce chlorine to sterilze the water then it is reunited at a latter stage in refinement. But some sodium is released and therin lies some of the problem. All of these problems seem only to affect Potted plants in the ground they must be able to shed most of the pathogens. Some plants this doesnt affect them at all, to some its a slow and horrible death.

Those of you that do not have this problem consider yourself Lucky. I suspect this is the number one deterant of new enthusist.

Mitch

I can't say that I understand how high alkalinity affects plants badly, and haven't found any reference that helps with this. It is not really a condition of high or low pH. It involves dissociated carbonate molecules that have the effect of buffering the pH. This is why alkalinity is measured in ppm. It has the effect of making the water is very stable and this is why high alkalinity is good for salt water aquariums that react badly to quick changes in water chemistry. Essentially the carbonate can absorb lots of acid, like a sponge, keeping it from affecting pH until the carbonate, or alkalinity, is used up, then the pH changes. So adding acid to water with high alkalinity will lower it but not necessarily change the pH.

High alakalinity affects nutrient uptake, rather than directly harming plants. Iron chlorosis in azalea is fairly common, the problem its also known as lime induce chlorosis, but other trace elements are effected as well. Some plants are good at getting iron out of alkali soils, and others aren't, so those that can't go yellow from lack of iron as pH goes over 7.

Have to be careful with acid injection because it can lower pH to much, but its fairly common procedure in nurseries. You can also use nitric acid (adds Nitrate to solution) or phosphoric acid (adds phosphorous) Not recomended to use hydrochloric (aka muriatic) acid as this adds chloride which is toxic to plants.

Paul