Sad :(

A laburnam in a garden I care for, in full flower, has succumbed to weight, wind, rain and honey fungus. It was dosed last year with amillatox but the underlying damage had been done. The trunk finally split from ground level to about 3ft and it toppled onto railings by a main road so it had to come down. Took the top off yesterday and I've to deal with the root this afternoon.

Although poisonous I love laburnam with its canopy of bright flowers and I put this down to a failure and experience. Sadly we can't win them all. Also a large hibiscus apears to have gone the same way. Dead as a doornail, dry twigs that snap and not a leaf this year. Last year was a mass of flower. No sign of fungus on this one and it could be simply age but it's a sad week.

 

Know the feeling. I have just had to remove the top half of an acer, one of the snakebark ones. There is not sign of life in the portion and I did not want it dying right back down the trunk. Trouble is now I have a shrub rather than a tree.
Also have lost a Dahne Somerset this year and 2/3 of another one has had to be cut away as dead. Whether the rest of it revives is in doubt. Still it is an opportunity to fill the gap with something different.

 

Things move on, its sad at the time to see the end of an old friend, but it usually gives us the chance to try something new.
In this case though frogesque the honey fungus is not going to make the choice easy. :(

 

Thanks for the sympathy guys. Sounds daft but It really affected me earlier today. I took the stump down to ground level and the heartwood was almost all a soft mushy pale pulp that I could lift out in handfulls, quite unlike the rich dark hard heartwood of the branches.

I'll have to have a think about what can go in the gap. I plan on something like DAG's ceanothus tree in place of the hibiscus so something different - maybe the red hawthorn, Crataegus oxyacantha 'Pauls Scarlet'

 

In my experience don't touch Ceanothus if its honey fungus that totalled your Laburnum. It just eats them up. A bit like vine weevils and busy lizzies, the perfect snack and best attacked first. I know this may not help but you might be amused to see what happened on 23rd May this year to one I planted. I planted these planted in 1984, a line of 14 of them. Strangely there is no rot. A freak wind snapped it off, chucked it over the fence, and cleverly missed the others and the brick pillar next to it- and yes that is honestly what happened! There was no other damage but a neighbour's furniture was chucked into an adjacent field. Freaky stuff. Lucky it wasn't 6th June!!



[ 15. June 2006, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: jazid ]

 

use the info from RHS re plants that are less likely to get honey fungus - but they don't make any promises :(
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles1100/honey_fungus.asp