sickly rowan
 

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.

In article ,
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.

That could well be a fungal root infection, in which case it has had
it. If it is that sick, cutting it back hard will probably kill it,
but there isn't much you can do to cure it. My inclination would be
either to plant a vigorous climber (e.g. Clematis montana) or grub
it up and replant with something that ISN'T a member of the Rosaceae.
If you do the former, watch out for it falling down as it decays.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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

Weed my email address to reply.
http://website.lineone.net/~rodcraddock/index.html

In article ,
Pickle wrote:

Thanks Nick - is rowan a member of the rosaceae family then? What I
might do is cut off the dead branches and then give it this year and
see. If it doesn't recover I'll chop it down in autumn.

Yes. A very high proportion of hardy decorative trees are - it is
a family that specialises in the northern temperate zones.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.