What's wrong with these birch trees?
What's wrong with these birch trees?
Apologies if the photo quality is insufficient. In a particular bit of forest, I found an area with a large birch population that all seemed to be suffering from the same issue. Something is causing the leaves to first stripe green and yellow, then turn brown/black, and while there are new leaf buds forming, trees are seemingly losing the leaves faster than they can replace them. There are other areas with birch trees on the same forest that don't have this issue at all. In the affected area, some trees have only one or two leaves left with any green in them at all.
This is in New England, USA
Sadly the birch tree borer is wrecking havoc on the birch trees. Where I am in the Midwest, we have completely dead forests from that stupid bug.
That's kind of what I was wondering, the bronze birch borer has been expanding its range and it's definitely in some areas around my state already
Do you know if neem is effective against them?
I believe these are beech trees, not birches, and they appear to be suffering from beech leaf disease which is a newly introduced and highly deadly species of nematode.
Read more here: https://extension.psu.edu/beech-leaf-disease
I've got 99 birches, and a beech ain't one.
Agreed, birch leaves are serrated, these look like beeches
Ah thank you, I bet you're right. We've got a ton of both.
It's sad because they were already suffering from beech bark disease but this is even worse.
I go hunting many times a year and as you can imagine find myself surrounded by old birch forests from time to time.
I have yet to see a healthy group of birch trees. I even have birch on my property, and the only ones that are doing well are surrounded by anything other than birch.
Birches be crazy...