date palm has gone smelly and mushy

All Stretton, United Kingdom(Zone 8a)

Regards from Spain. I wonder if somebody could tell me what our date palm is suddenly suffering from. This morning we noticed a dark patch on one side of the trunk which when scraped with a penknife was found to be all mushy and smelly. After scraping away some more mush we found small white maggots about 1 cm in length. Any ideas gratefully accepted. This tree is about 30 foot tall and 6 yeas old.

Sinks Grove, WV

The maggots likely are secondary invaders of an infected wound, rather than a primary cause of injury to the tree. If you scraped away all the obviously infected tissue and found the rest of the trunk to be sound, it may be that the wound will heal. However, if the infection seemed deep-seated, the tree may be in danger - see http://tinyurl.com/yf7tzex

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