"Vox Humana" wrote in message
. ..
I have a sycamore that develops the same problem each spring. The leaves
are just fine then develop small spikes on the top surface. The margin of
the leaf seems to be most effected. Eventually the leaves distort and
fall
off. The tree also develops anthracnose later in the year. Neither
disease
seems to be killing the tree. While I have searched Google for ideas, I
can't find anything that seem relevant. I posted some pictures to
alt.binaries.pictures.garden under the title: "Sycamore disease ID
request"



At my previous home, the sycamore had that problem, although not in all
years. I don't recall the name of the syndrome. In one or two years, when we
first moved there, we paid some tree expert to put little injection things
into the tree. It didn't help. Then, we called the NY cooperative extension,
and a guy told us that the best way to help the tree was:

1) Clean up all the fallen leaves, especially in autumn. Bag them and get
rid of them. Don't compost them unless you can use a two-stage (2 bin)
method, on big property, pretty far from the tree, and make really sure the
compost's reaching the right temperature. Naturally, we raked the lawn in
the fall, but I liked to leave some in the flower beds as winter mulch. He
said to forget that idea. It harbors the spores or whatever.

2) Help the tree during long, dry spells, by thoroughly watering, very
deeply, out at the drip line.

There'll still be some ugly years, but if our tree was any indication, it
didn't seem to suffer in the 20 years we lived with it. And, it was about 30
years old when we arrived.