Palm tree help?

I may be in the wrong forum so maybe someone can direct me.
The attached picture is a washingtonia robusta growing in 9A in a row
of 16 next to my driveway. All the others are perfect, and this one was
one of my best. They are all 5 years old, 2 in the ground. In one day the
whole thing browned and slumped. It was after the first rain in 6 months.

I can find no mold or rot, bugs or disease. Just radical rapid browning.
All the others are green. Even the crown is beginning to brown. It had been
fertilized with palm tree spikes the same as the other trees...being a smaller
tree I cut spikes (maybe root burn?). I sprayed the crown with anti-fungal
agent, flushed the roots, and fertilized with manganese and some time-release
balanced granules. I have never seen anything go down so fast. I have
queens, pindos, and canaries thriving. Anyone know what happened?

I sure don't know, but there is a Palms and Cycads forum, right here:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/palms/all/

You said this occured after a rain. We can have similar problems if surface salts can be washed, from areas where they have collected, to around the plants and when the water evaporates the concentrated salts are too much for the plant. Similar problem could be fuel or chemical spill that was washed down in the rain. A much less likely reason (but it does happen) a toxic substance buried where you planted the tree and the roots have just reached it.

Regards Brian

Thanks for the responses. I will post this in the palms forum, too.
Yes, we had a long drought and live 40 clicks from the ocean so it could be salts.
In Texas it also could be toxins, since it is 3 feet from the neighbors' cattle pasture.
They spray the fence line with vegetation killer 3x/yr. and maybe some of this
washed into the roots. All the other trees are on the fence line and fine.

That simply looks like cold damage. Around me every Queen palm got hit and so did all the fan palms etc. pindos, and canaries take the cold better.

Your Queen palms look fine??? If that's so it wasn't cold. I bring this up because cold damge can take a while to show up.

If it had something to do with rain fall then I would be betting it was burnt by fertilizer that basically disolved all at once.

I'm not very good with palms so ...... Palmbob is the person you probably need to talk to on DG. He watches the palm forum.

I'd wondered at first about cold too, but since the other 15 in the row are all reported undamaged, I thought it was an unlikely explanation - if it was cold, they would all have been affected to some extent.

What about palm phytoplasma (palm lethal yellowing)? Is that present in the area?

Resin

If your neighbor is a responsible cattleman, he's probably using RoundUp to keep the fence line clear. RoundUp breaks down rapidly in soil. That's what we use on our fence lines. If he has an Applicator's License, he has to take CEU's to keep his license current and, believe me, the emphasis has been on using the least amount and the least toxic herbicides and pesticides to do the job. Most ranchers are bleeding heavily right now due to the extreme drought, high feed costs and low cattle prices. He's not out there wasting what's left of his money using extra herbicides.

You mentioned you cut the spikes into smaller pieces for this palm. I would think the smaller pieces would dissolve faster causing fertilizer burn. I don't know if it's possible to burn palm roots with fertilizer spikes, but I've read warnings against their use on other trees. Too much fertilizer is concentrated around the spikes. Enough to kill some roots. Being that close to the gulf, the high humidity might have crumbled those small pieces break down. Then they went into solution in that first rain.

When a plant is stressed and ailing, the last thing it needs is more fertilizer.
Not meaning to sound flippant, but sometimes having done everything right, you still lose one or two.

Thanks for the input in this forum.
I posted the wholestory in the Palm forum:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/966456/

It turned out to be a gopher eating the tap root.

The tree is coming back!

As far as the herbicide I would like to simply add the guy who
does the spraying doesn't speak English and shows up twice a year.
Sometimes my field is browned from it three feet on my side of the fence.
The emphasis is definately on saving $.