Garden Pests and Diseases: Sick Cherry, 0 by HydroPinke

HydroPinke wrote:
1st. I apologize for my longwindedness, Im trying to be thourough b/c I know its really hard to pin down plant problems without obvious cause via photos and not seeing the actual plant in person
I believe this is a Mt Fuji flowering cherry, but its for sure a flowering cherry. Here's the scoop. I noticed a while ago there was one main branch of the tree that looks dead. The rest of the tree flowered and leafed out normally, but this branch was struggling with about 6-7 leaves in all. Some of those leaves are yellow and have a few holes in them, but not enough to think that was the problem b/c it was really only one leaf that was spotty and holey. So I pulled out the ladder and loppers this morning to remove that branch. To my surprise the branch isn't really dead, there were still green buds at the tip of each offshoot branch attached to the main branch. I still cut it off, a good 6" back into what looks like healthy wood. The first thing I noticed is there looks to be a little bit of rot in the bark layer. So I get on the internet and started reading about other people problems with cherries which lead me to post where another woman had nearly the same symptoms, plus weak roots. I think to myself " this tree has a nearly 7" caliper trunk, surely I have well established roots". So I grab the trunk and give it a yank. Wouldn't you know, I was able to move the tree about 3" in either directing leaving a 2" gap between the soil and the trunk. I was shocked. So from experience and years of telling former customers, if the problem is not obvious above the soil, get down in that dirt and see whats going on. So now I dig holes about 15" deep each, one about 1' away from the trunk and a 2nd right against the trunk. It looks as though the top 3-5" of soil had been amended, then about 10-12" of glacial till and finally I struck clay. You know what I didn't find? Not one root! Not in either hole, there was not one healthy white root. There really wasn't even any dead or decaying roots. So now I am thinking I have some kind of trunk/root rot, like butt rott or Armillaria and maybe the roots are so far gone that they have already decomposed. I took a shaving from the trunk about 10" below the soil to try and find the characteristics of the rot so I can identify it. But there us nothing obvious. No discoloration or papery-ness. Ugggg I feel so stumped! I go back to the tree and look for ANY anomalies, I found 2 things which where out of the ordinary and I will post the pics below with a description of each.

I am not really concerned with saving the tree, I really wanted a fruiting cherry any way. I want to identify the problem to know if I can plant another prunus species there or if I have to plant something else in the meantime and give the bacteria/fungus/who knows what time to die.

This first pic is of the end of the branch I removed this morning. The small blackish marks are from my loppers. If you look to the upper right portion of the branch you can see the bark there is a bit "fluffier" than the rest.