What happened to my eastern redbud?
We planted a weeping eastern redbud 4 years ago in the landscaping on the south east side of my house. This tree has been beautiful in the spring and full of leaves for the last 3 years. This year however, while all of the other redbuds in our neighborhood are blooming nicely, ours has done nothing. Hints of buds have developed but are no longer developing (for 2 weeks). What could have happened? We planted this tree on the first birthday of our oldest daughter and it saddens us to see it dead. Is this the case and what might have happened? Any ideas? Thanks.
There are two things that come to mind when I hear of dying Redbud trees. The first one is Dieback/Canker which is a destructive diease that attacks Redbud trees. It's caused by a fungas and there's no effective chemical control for it. The other is Verticillium wilt which is caused by soil inhabiting fungas. No control for this one either. If just the top part of the tree is only affective, you might be able to cut back to where there is still good wood but usually it's fatal.
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MagnoliaMan
- Cool Member
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- Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:15 pm
If you are in heavy clay soil and experienced a season like we did in KS last year with constant rain, your redbud could have actually lost part of its root system. Redbuds are sensitive to too much water, and although it may have stayed alive through the last growing season it could have lost the ability to store food reserves in its roots since it may have lost a goodly portion of those roots. Here in KS, to compound the problem, we had a winter drought for two or three months. A number of redbuds in my neighborhood did the same thing - tried to bud out but fizzled. And to top it off, even those that began nice bloom got hammered by a very hard (20°) late freeze! If it tries to come back from the base you could always cut off the dead top and let it develop into a "clump" redbud. Good luck!