I was thinning my Pro. Nana Juniper cascade and I noticed, buried in the poofy overgrowth, a few smallish (3/32"-1/8) smooth, shinny, light brown, oval berry looking growths attached to the still green twigs.

I have seen these in the past and assumed they where the dormant state of cedar apple rust and trimmed them off.

Is this what they are?

Doug Taylor

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You hit in on the head! Whenever junipers are grown in the vicinity of Malus
(apples), they become hosts to apple rust. When the berries open, they
provide the spores which infect the apples. Then the apples develop leaf
galls which, in turn, infect the junipers. Once you see a few of those
"berries", examine the entire plant for them and cut them off. You will
probably have to remove many of the branchlets to which they cling, since
they wrap themselves around the branches. Once they open, they exude a
disgusting orange gel, so try to get to them before this happens.
As for the infected apple leaves, you must remove all these leaves as soon
as you see black spots appear.
Some people defoliate their apples even before seeing any damage.
Don't toss the infected leaves on the ground, but place them in a plastic
bag and seal it. The same goes for the juniper galls. Good luck, Doug.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Taylor"
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 10:51 AM
Subject: [IBC] Juniper Gall question


I was thinning my Pro. Nana Juniper cascade and I noticed, buried in the
poofy overgrowth, a few smallish (3/32"-1/8) smooth, shinny, light brown,
oval berry looking growths attached to the still green twigs.

I have seen these in the past and assumed they where the dormant state of
cedar apple rust and trimmed them off.

Is this what they are?

Doug Taylor

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++++Sponsored, in part, by Mike Page++++
************************************************** ******************************
-- The IBC HOME PAGE & FAQ: http://www.internetbonsaiclub.org/ --
+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++


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************************************************** ******************************
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+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++

On 24 Feb 2005 at 10:51, Douglas Taylor wrote:

I was thinning my Pro. Nana Juniper cascade and I noticed,
buried in the poofy overgrowth, a few smallish (3/32"-1/8)
smooth, shinny, light brown, oval berry looking growths
attached to the still green twigs.

I have seen these in the past and assumed they where the
dormant state of cedar apple rust and trimmed them off.

Is this what they are?



Yes, or perhaps a closely related fungus. If you grow crabapple
(or perhaps pear or hawthorn) bonsai as well as juniper it's
almost certain you will get this at one time or another.

Careful removal and total off-site disposal of infected leaves
and "cedar apples" will _help_ to control it. I know of no way
to eradicate it.

If you grow juniper bonsai and there are apple orchards or even
individual apple, pear, etc.(including wild crabapple) trees in
the neighborhood (200 yards) you'll also get it, and perhaps
with more regularity since there's no way to control the Rosa
family species half of the fungal equation.

It _may_ be possible (but I wouldn't bet the farm on it) to
control the rust by spraying the apples, etc. with a fungicide
containing captan, mancozeb, myclobutanil, or triadimefon (READ
THE LABEL!!!!). And be careful, those aren't for use by the
faint of heart. There is no chemical treatment for junipers
that I know of.

The cedar apples do no lasting damage to the juniper. What
damage that does occur will happen when you remove the apples.

Good luck.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Nature
encourages no looseness, pardons no errors. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Doug - they almost certainly are early cedar apple rust galls or
alternatively, one of the other 2 rusts that infect junipers. Marty is
right on in how to dispose of them, but I'd add that the "disgusting
orange gel" is the spore mass that will infect your apples (and other
susceptible Rosaceous hosts) so it's *imperative* to get them off
before this occurs and continues the growth cycle.

Likewise, for the apples, remove the infected leaves when they show
the typical bright yellow-to-orange spots, *don't* wait for them to
turn brown/black, that's the spores forming to reinfect your junipers

To see pictures of the slimy alien creatures that are the "apples"
releasing spores, and a good overall look at the disease, go to
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3055.html

from Anita, whose landscape redcedars have *all three* rusts, and
"apples" so big, Nina took one back to show off to her plant
pathologist friends...
Northern Harford County, Maryland, USDA zone 6

Marty Haber wrote:
You hit in on the head! Whenever junipers are grown in the vicinity of
Malus (apples), they become hosts to apple rust. When the berries open,
they provide the spores which infect the apples. Then the apples
develop leaf galls which, in turn, infect the junipers. Once you see a
few of those "berries", examine the entire plant for them and cut them
off. You will probably have to remove many of the branchlets to which
they cling, since they wrap themselves around the branches. Once they
open, they exude a disgusting orange gel, so try to get to them before
this happens.
As for the infected apple leaves, you must remove all these leaves as
soon as you see black spots appear.
Some people defoliate their apples even before seeing any damage.
Don't toss the infected leaves on the ground, but place them in a
plastic bag and seal it. The same goes for the juniper galls. Good
luck, Doug.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Douglas Taylor"
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 10:51 AM
Subject: [IBC] Juniper Gall question


I was thinning my Pro. Nana Juniper cascade and I noticed, buried in
the poofy overgrowth, a few smallish (3/32"-1/8) smooth, shinny, light
brown, oval berry looking growths attached to the still green twigs.

I have seen these in the past and assumed they where the dormant state
of cedar apple rust and trimmed them off.

Is this what they are?

Doug Taylor

************************************************** ******************************
++++Sponsored, in part, by Gregory Brenden++++
************************************************** ******************************
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+++++ Questions? Help? e-mail +++++

On Feb 24, 2005, at 7:21 PM, Anita Hawkins wrote:

Doug - they almost certainly are early cedar apple rust galls or
alternatively, one of the other 2 rusts that infect junipers. Marty is
right on in how to dispose of them, but I'd add that the "disgusting
orange gel" is the spore mass that will infect your apples (and other
susceptible Rosaceous hosts) so it's *imperative* to get them off
before this occurs and continues the growth cycle.
snip

from Anita, whose landscape redcedars have *all three* rusts, and
"apples" so big, Nina took one back to show off to her plant
pathologist friends...
Northern Harford County, Maryland, USDA zone 6

And from her husband, whose junipers are soon to expose her crabapples
to galls in the frozen wasteland of southern New York--I get them here
too. There are both red cedars and apple trees in the yard. I have
apple/crabapple bonsai, and a number of junipers. I haven't noticed
too many galls on my junipers, but my apples were loaded last year.

Craig Cowing
NY
Zone 5b/6a Sunset 37

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from Anita, whose landscape redcedars have *all three* rusts, and
"apples" so big, Nina took one back to show off to her plant
pathologist friends...

[Shudder]... they were HUGE. At the time I was helping the guy who was
setting up the laboratory exercises for Plant Pathology class at
Cornell.

Nina

No cedar apple rust on my bonsai since I moved to Maryland...

In a message dated 2/25/2005 10:23:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
writes:

Whose landscape redcedars have *all three* rusts, and
"apples" so big, Nina took one back to show off to her plant
pathologist friends...

If a plant is infected, can the cycle be broken?

Billy on the Florida Space Coast

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If a plant is infected, can the cycle be broken?
Billy on the Florida Space Coast


It's easy to break the cycle with cedar-apple rust, because the spores
on juniper can ONLY infect apples, and the spores on apples can ONLY
infect junipers. Keeping a reasonable distance between apples and
junipers will break the cycle (as long as you don't live near an apple
orchard or a juniper waste area). I've told this story dozens of
times, but once mo I had a yard with a big juniper in it. I had
two apple trees: one was a yard away from the juniper, the other was 3
yards away. The close one was being killed by constant exposure to
rust spores, but the one 2 yards farther away was barely infected.
This is because spore deposition from a point source follows an
exponential decay pattern: a lot of spores are splashed near the tree,
but very few get even a few yards away.

The decay curve is steep for water-dispersed spores (the spores on
juniper), because water droplets are large and don't splash very far.
In addition, the infectious period is only a few weeks in spring. So it
is easier to keep roseaceous plants disease-free than junipers. You
could bring them into the garage during rainstorms, for instance. It
is not as easy to keep junipers disease-free. The air-dispersed spores
coming off of apple leaves travel much farther in the wind; there is
still an exponential decline in spore concentration, but it is much
shallower; a juniper a mile from an apple could still get infected.
However, the galls on juniper can be pruned off easily with little harm
to the design of the bonsai except in extreme cases (someone once gave
me a tiny juniper bonsai with quince-apple rust on the main trunk: it
was cute, but doomed).

Nina, proud owner of red cedar bonsai as well as crabapples.