(Atlantic) Kate Olson, Cass County Extension and Outreach Director, said she has received a number of calls in the last week regarding leaf drop on trees.
Olson said in the Atlantic area, Oaks seem to be especially affected but other trees are seeing symptoms as well. Conditions over the past few weeks have been ideal for the development of the anthracnose fungus on trees.
“Anthracnose is kind of triggered by wet, cool spring weather which we certainly had some of that and then it starts to show up when we have hot summer weather which we’ve had a lot of that recently as well,” said Olson. “So, it’s kind of triggered with that wet cool weather and then as it gets hot it spreads quickly and the rains that we’ve had in the last couple weeks also spread that, it spreads by splashing from leaf to leaf, so it’s kind of the perfect storm so folks will be seeing this.”
Olson said if you have a healthy, well-established tree this isn’t an issue to be concerned about.
“You’ll definitely notice it when your tree starts shedding green leaves in the middle of the summer, but it shouldn’t hurt the tree long term,” said Olson. “So, as long as the tree keeps about over half to two-thirds of its leaves, even though it looks like a huge pile of leaves on the ground, it’s actually not damaging a tree it might actually help the tree because the tree is opening up a little space to get more airflow through, so getting more air flow through the top of the tree will actually kind of help the tree fight off the fungal disease because the leaves will dry out more quickly so the disease won’t spread.”
Olson said most trees that are affected by anthracnose kind of get hit once, drop a large quantity of leaves, but then as the summer goes on they’ll continue to produce additional leaves and by July those leaves should start to recover.
For more information, you can call the Cass County Extension Office at 712-243-1132.
