Bleeding Canker

[Pford75]

Our 3 Horse Chesnuts all have bleeding canker.....you might have seen articles in the news recently about this disease.

They have lost nearly all of their leaves and have no 'conker' crop to speak of. V.sad since they are all mature specimens and are a key part of the landscape. We plan to keep them standing for now....but they may need to be felled

Will try to post some pics soon

 

[jocelyn plummer]

It is a shame, we noticed them when we were in Norfolk last week, and it is the same all around Milton Keynes as well.
I think that the conkers are forming-- at least you can see the green cases, but maybe they will be empty.

Will be interesting to see what the experts say.

 

[Pford75]

View attachment 2

The larger pics below don't really do a great job of showing the problem. The leaves are all brown and curled (as in the close-up pic above). This has only affected the Horse Chesnuts and AFAIK there is no treatment.

View attachment 1

 

[Penners]

Are you sure it's bleeding canker?

A lot of horse chestnuts are also suffering from a leaf miner infestation at the moment. The leaves all go brown and drop off prematurely, but apparently it doesn't do nearly as much long-term harm to the tree.

Bleeding canker

Leaf miner

 

[Pford75]

Penners - I'm not certain.....i've had two tree men look at it and one didn't know and the other vaguely suggested canker. I've put a call into our LA tree officer and hopefully will get a view from him. Either way it's a pain, although the leaf miner doesn't appear to kill the tree.

 

[Penners]

Well, I'm no expert, but the leaves on our HC look very much like the above picture of yours. And we're pretty sure that it's got leaf miner.

Bleeding canker causes the bark to split and a sticky liquid to ooze out. Do yours have this symptom?

Bleeding canker is much more serious than leaf miner. Trees sometimes recover from it spontaneously, but there's no cure. Leaf miner is unsightly but far less dangerous to the tree. Advice is to try and collect and burn all the fallen leaves in autumn, in order to reduce the risk of overwintering pupae. Or you can seal the leaves in plastic bags until the following July. This ensures that all the emerging moths will die inside the bags.

Fingers crossed for leaf miner. Do let us know what the tree officer says.