Plum tree - sudden death?

[spaceguru]

Hello,
I have a Plum tree that was planted from a bare-root in Dec'14. It seemed to be doing okay last year - had to trim off many branches due to either some infection or phytotoxicity (amateur grower who did not pay notice to spray compatibilities).
This year in spring it came up very well, with lots of blossoms that turned into fruits, and nice green leaves. Then a few leaves started to show chlorosis like effects. And that just cascaded very rapidly to now it seeming ready to drop all its leaves. This happened in a matter of a week or so. I had thought it needed some supplemental iron, so I had done foliar spray with Dr. Iron. The problem however, seems to have started much before I applied the iron. In winter I had applied dormant oil.
Attached are some pics that show the current status. I did a bark scratch, and the cambium appears to be green, so the tree is not completely dead.
Any ideas or suggestions? Tree located in Los Angeles, California (Glendale) area.

[Lindsaylew82]

No pics attached.

Did you do any type of soil amendments, or have you fertilized the tree via ferts on the soil?

[spaceguru]

Sorry, forgot about pics, attached now.

I applied some fruit fertilizer 5-5-2 in early march, but that is about it.

thanks!

[JONA]

Hi Spaceguru,
Can you just cut a piece off one of those shoots.
Check if there is any sign of brown staining under the bark along the cambium layer.

[Lindsaylew82]

Any aphids on there?

[spaceguru]

@ JONA: I will do so in the evening, and post the results.

@ Lindsay: I don't recall seeing any aphids on it. Although I did see quite a few ladybugs on a peach tree few spots next to it

[spaceguru]

Hello,

So, no aphids that I could see.

Also, attached are pics of a branch cut - I do not see any brown staining.
Also, attached a closeup of a leaf with the veins looking red..

thanks!

[applestar]

Could it have been girdled? Show us a photo of the base of the trunk?

[spaceguru]

girdled - I did not know what that was, but looking up pics on the web, I did not cut through the bark and the cambium.

I did take the following pic which is just a little (~1ft) above the graft point, and there seems to be something unusual going on at this location - some splitting of trunk at a few points.

Also to note from the trunk image - you might see that the diameter of the top part is larger than the bottom (kind of a inverted bottleneck, there is also some photo perspective happening to exaggerate the issue).
This is because of my stupidity. Last summer I seemed to have a lot of ant problems, and on a colleague's suggestion, I smeared vaseline on the trunk in a ring (brown ring towards the bottom) of the image. This acted like a barrier for the ants. But I forgot to clean it off once the ants were gone, and therefore that portion of the trunk did not grow as much as the rest. Maybe this is a sort of girdling effect? It was more pronounced on a neighboring plum tree that was also doing wonderfully well till high winds cause it to snap right at the vaseline application point.

Thanks!

[JONA]

I hope I'm wrong but I still have a suspicion that that looks like bacterial canker taking hold.
If it is....then there is no cure I'm afraid and the tree will rapidly die.