Japanese Maples: Japanese Maple disease? or just stress?, 1 by lmelling

lmelling wrote:
Padre,
I am having the same problem with my japanese maple (planted in 1997). It was very healthy up to fall of 2002 and had grown from about 4' to maybe 7-8' and was nice a full looking. That fall I noticed lots of dead "twigs" so I pruned them out in late fall (and maybe there were browning leaves, but nothing I took alarm about).

Spring 2003 was very wet and rainy. By summer I was noticing leaf and/or whole branch dieback on several of the larger limbs. I asked around and people told me things like "winter die back" and that I should just prune the dead branches off.

Well, by this spring (again a wet year) I had one large branch left (see picture) that had leaves on it and looked healthy - everything else was dead - 3 of 4 large branches. I called a local nursery and a friend who's a professor of horticulture, and they both said the only thing I can do is to prune all the dead branches off and hope for the best. By late summer the top of the live branch started getting brown leaves.... I don't hold much hope for next year. My once beautiful maple I was so proud of is pretty much gone...

This message was edited Nov 3, 2004 12:13 AM