On 23 Apr 2005 02:23:41 -0700, (Pickle)
wrote:

We have a rowan at the end of our garden, no idea how old it is as it
was there when we moved in but it's about 25 feet tall. 3 years ago it
did really well but the last 2 years it has hardly had any leaves and
they have shrivelled quickly. There's a very large oak tree there too
as well as assorted shrubbery.
Any advice - is it maybe just old age? Would it benefit from pruning
or coppicing? There are quite a lot of dead branches and it just
doesn't look that healthy in general.

As Nick says, there are a few fungal diseases that can be seriously
damaging over the whole of the huge Roseaceae family so yes try
pruning but really I think you're going to end up with a dead tree
sooner rather than later. Sadly avoiding Roseaceae does limit your
choice of compact ornamental trees but there's still plenty to choose
from. We've got an area of about 3/4 acre we cleared last winter,
there were several sickly ornamental Hawthorns in there so we're going
to be avoiding Roseaceae in our planting there.

=================================================

Rod

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