North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[nottke1 <nottke1@earthlink.net>]

Steve,
The experience of our rural neighborhood, which has many types of fruit, is 
the deer favor the leaves of apple and European plum, then Asian plum, then 
American plum, then domesticated cherry, then blueberry - never had any 
damage on grape, pear, pawpaw, persimmon, or nut trees.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
>From: Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>
>Sent: Jul 19, 2009 12:53 PM
>To: NAFEx <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Subject: [NAFEX] Deer and European Plums
>
>
>Do deer have a special fondness for European plums?
>
>A few days ago I was in my yard and discovered some unauthorized pruning 
>of a young plum tree. Mostly, just leaves were eaten off leaving stubs 
>lining the little branches. Some of the soft tips of branches were 
>chewed off too. Two of the branches with missing tips were a good 6 feet 
>off the ground. A nearby American Hybrid plum had just a few missing leaves.
>Yesterday, I discovered my other, even smaller, European plum now has 
>some missing leaves and missing branch tips. So far, neither tree has 
>lost even 10% of its leaves so it's not too serious yet. I live right in 
>town where I didn't used to have to worry about deer. In recent years 
>they started showing up in the fall. (I discovered they like fallen 
>pears far more than apples.) Only rarely has there been evidence of a 
>summer visit.
>
>Steve in the Adirondacks