Cordyline Australis Problem

Hiya,

I wonder if you could give me some advice. I have 4 Cordyline Australis' (New Zealand Cabbage Tree) in my front garden and it looks like 3 of them are dying :(. They looked just fine up to last month when first the leaves of the biggest tree started to hang and slowly started to drop. Now about a month later the biggest tree has almost no leaves left and also the 2 smaller ones seem to rot where the new leaves would appear in the middle of the tree and they are also loosing a lot of the green leaves, they come of just touching them. I took some photos:

This is how they looked in January:



This is how they are looking now and some close up's of the rot:













What could have caused this? We had a lot of snow in January could that have been it? Although they only just started to have this problem about a month ago? Are the leaves going to grow back or are they going to die? Is there anything I should do?

Thanks a lot in advance for the advice.
Anne

 

Hi, Cherry, Cordylines don't like anything below 10-12 C° minuses and that's what you got this winter or even colder. If you cut back all the rotten tops, it might sprout - either from the trunk a little below the cut or from somewhere lower. Seal the cutting to prevent infection, too. Hopefully it will regrow within a year. Were your Cordylines completely dead it would look really pitiful... Watch out and don't let the rotting progress, it works like a caved tooth...

 

The adjoining thread on' dead cordyline ' has all the information you need

 

Thanks everyone for your advice, it's very much appreciated.

I had a good look at them today and the tops of the two smaller ones have completely rotted so I cut them down to the point where there was no more rot and also the biggest of them had lost all of the top leaves to we cut the rotten top off as well. It doesn't look too bad now as there were still some leaves left on the stem so I hope they will be some sprouting from the stem at some point. The fourth tree has taken no damage at all which I am very glad about. There was another baby growing underneath the little one that sadly died, too but I cut to the ground so hopefully it will regrow from the root. I had another Cordyline in the garden that died last year and it has started to regrow from the root which is nice.

What do I use to seal the cuts with?

Thanks again,
Anne

 

I use Arbrex Seal and Heal. In fact I used it yesterday on our cordyline. It seems to be a big improvement on the old style wound paint as it comes in a squeezy bottle with built-in applicator.