North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 04:44 PM 5/2/2007, Hal wrote:
> Do these "frass tubes" look like white-ish extrusions, about the diameter of
> a toothpick, that stick out from the bark up to about an inch long? Just
> curious, as I am seeing these types of thin cylinders all over several of my
> freeze damaged plants. The thin cylinders are light and soft, and
> disintegrate to an ash-like consistency when touched. My fig trees are
> covered with them, and there are a few on the kiwi trunks as well. I had
> assumed they were some sort of extruded material in response to freeze
> injury, since most do not seem to be coming from any obvious holes in the
> bark.

That's a perfect description of them -  I've not seen them on 
anything other than the persimmons, but I've not really looked, either.

While on my regular lunch hour stroll yesterday, I detoured through 
the courtyard of the community college campus across the street from 
my office to see what, if any, damage the sizeable trifoliate orange 
tree sustained - it looks BAD!  most of the branches/twigs are 
yellow, with extensive splitting.  Most leaves are wilted/yellow, 
though there are occasional clumps of healthy green leaves here and 
there - mostly underneath an overhanging second story.

LLP