Hello! I have a Tulip Magnolia, 3rd year in the ground, whose buds get massacred every spring. They brown and die, and some of them look like half of the top has been bitten off. Hopefully you can see this in the photo. Is this some sort of pest, or are the low temps doing this? Right now, we are having lows in the 30's and probably won't be frost-free until mid-April. Oh, and I also need to mention that this just happened in the last couple of weeks. Any advice would be much appreciated - I was really hoping to have several different kinds of magnolias on our property.
Magnolia Muncher?
I can't imagine the cold would do that, it is normal. Have you considered deer?
No deer in this yard - we are in the middle of a subdivision and we have a fenced in yard. We have a lot of squirrels - would they do that?
If your fence isn't at LEAST 8 ft tall you can still have deer at night in any subdivision.The deer eat the buds off the magnolias at work here in Des Moines at the cemetery. Every winter...they also strip the buds off the lilacs in the spring season. Look for deer tracks around your tree. May be something else but not likely. :-)
Yes the deer could definitely jump our fence, but if they do, they don't touch any other plant in the yard, or even all the buds on that tree; so I thought it unlikely. I did notice that three buds survived, so at least we will have a few blooms on the magnolia this year.
I would give it systemic insecticide. At the end of the season so whatever is in there gets killed before it hatches with the spring budding.
I've seen rabbits climb my magnolia. Kind of funny if it didn't make me so mad. However they eat the bud entirely off not just nibble the end.
Wormfood - good idea - it does look like something just hatched out of the tip, ruining the bud. I will put that on my gardening calendar!
And, duck_toller, rabbits climbing your magnolia! That is a hoot! You need to get a photo of that.
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