Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] Persistent leaves

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Persistent leaves
  • Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:50:38 -0500

I've decided to copy this into a new subject rather than reply to the old subject as I had planned.....

tanis cuff wrote:
Due to the late summer heavy rains here (s.WI), some roses & pears & apples
had late growth and then leaves which refused to drop for the winter. One of the
worst is my M7 apple rootstocks, in a nursery which I planted for topworking in
spring 08. They are still leafy, even tho the leaves ARE all brown. I'd always
assumed that persistant leaves were a sign that wood didn't harden off properly for
winter. So, do I spend the time to collect scionwood for use on these M7s? Can I
hope to find enough healthy wood on these rootstocks next spring, or would scion
collection and then the grafting be a big waste of time?
I missed your message when you first wrote it but I'll reply anyway.
I used to worry when my trees did that. My apples especially, would often not harden off at the tip of the new growth and the leaves would remain into winter. I used to assume those tips would be killed over the winter but, in the spring, new leaves would emerge, even from the terminal bud. They would grow even after several winter days colder than 30 below zero. Of course, I grow cultivars appropriate for the climate and they are on seedling root stock, not M7.

Something new happened to my trees this fall/winter. We had near normal fall temperatures but avoided an actual frost until the end of October (A new record for my yard!) From there, the temperatures continued slowly down and I thought we eased into winter rather gently. I was thinking the trees had plenty of time to fully harden off before the below zero temperatures came.
Well, in December, I realized that the trees did not loose most of their leaves. Probably the worst were my Nova pear (grafted onto a Mountain Ash) and my Honeygold apple grafted on who knows what. Those 2 trees still had nearly 100% of their leaves on the tree. Those leaves had turned a dark brown to black but they were still hanging on. Since then we've had some heavy wind. Gusts over 50 MPH several time one day last week. That blew off a good number of those leaves but many still hang on.
At this point, I'm not real worried and expect the trees to be OK in the spring. I sure wonder what made all of those leaves hold on though.

Steve in the Adirondacks (Zone 4 on the map, zone 3 in real life)






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page