They can help with needle blight but not Seiridium canker disease or root rot. I don’t recommend applying fungicides mainly because some of these trees are very large and you’d have to get it high into the air and do applications year-round,” she said.įungicides are not effective for all diseases. “You can prune some branches to make it look better, but you’re not suddenly going to turn it into a green, healthy tree again regardless of what you do. If your Leyland cypress is showing a lot of brown branches or thinning canopy, there’s not much you can do to save it, according to Williams-Woodward. Stress on the trees also invites bagworms - the larval (caterpillar) stage of a moth - to defoliate and kill the tree. A needle blight disease caused by the fungus Passalora sequioae causes the shedding of needles usually in the lower third of tree, which makes it look extremely bare and brown. Leyland cypress is sometimes susceptible to other disease and insect issues. “If you have a compromised root system that’s not growing well and have a giant canopy, this makes the tree fall over.”Īnother common problem occurs when the roots fail to translocate water to the canopy and the branches die off, a symptom of Seiridium canker disease. In storms, they’ll just fall over because they don’t have roots to support them,” Williams-Woodward said. “Leylands often don’t grow a large root system. The drought stress in the summer combined with wet winters and other extreme weather can cause root issues. The lifespan of the Leyland cypress is relatively short in Georgia, around 15 to 20 years, due to the hot summers which are much warmer than Scotland, where the species was bred. It’s a lot of compounding events that seem to be causing issues.” It’s the lifespan of the trees, poor root systems, really wet conditions, and drought stress we had before that. “There are several things that are going on and all are coming together at this point. “They are dying I’m afraid - and it’s kind of expected,” said Williams-Woodward, who tracks diseases in ornamentals for commercial nurseries and greenhouses. In some cases, there are multiple factors happening around the same time. Rapid defoliation is a characteristic symptom of boxwood blight that separates it from other boxwood diseases, and it can move quickly through landscapes, especially with wet weather.įor Leyland cypress, one of the most popular landscape plants because of its quick growth, there are a range of issues that could be affecting the plant. Over the last few years, there has been an increase in samples of these species to UGA's Plant Disease Clinic, according to Extension plant pathologist Jean Williams-Woodward in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.īoxwood blight, first discovered in Georgia in 2014, has hit hard in established landscapes in cities including Atlanta, Augusta and Madison. Wet winters and severe weather have been causing disease and other issues in landscape plants, especially Leyland cypress and boxwood. If you're seeing brown areas in your landscape trees or hedges where you should be seeing green, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension can help.
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