Recovering a bark-damaged lemon tree

When removing limbs that are not entirely dead, be very careful. You must maintain sufficient foliage to shade the trunk and major limbs. Citrus bark is very easily damaged by direct sun.

If you cannot keep sufficient foliage, either loosely wrap the exposed wood with paper or paint it with whitewash.

snipped-for-privacy@www.zefox.net> wrote: ...

if you've lost half the bark then remove some of the branches to balance out the demand upon what remains of the bark.

songbird

It turns out that identifying "entirely dead" limbs will take some time. I think there are one or two that are still pushing flowers and buds with maybe 10% remaining bark at the isthmus. Likely they'll die, but they're not dead yet.

I've painted much of the trunk with some white latex housepaint cut with water.

For the most part the tree is holding existing fruit and is still setting new fruit and flowers, though slowly. Should I remove both, in an effort to promote vegetative growth? The only goal feasible seems to be saving the root system.

Photos are still at

The ecology of the yard was drastically changed by removal of a sickly mulberry tree. That, and the painting, seems to have slowed both rats and squirrels.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

snipped-for-privacy@www.zefox.net> wrote: ...

i'm glad it seems to have calmed down.

i'm wondering if providing a source of water a bit away from and perhaps even on the complete opposite side of the yard may decoy some animals from that tree or area, but that is an aside.

songbird

There is in fact a "squirrel bath" not far away in the front yard. I added it after finding chew damage on driplines in the front yard. Never saw the culprit and assumed it was a squirrel seeking water. After the bath went in (filled by a drip emitter supplied by the shrub irrigation valve) the problem largely went away. The attack on the lemon tree came "out of left field" several years later. It's clearly a rat, so maybe I was mistaken in blaming squirrels for the initial problem.

Now that I've painted the lemon bark white it's very easy to see new damage. So far, only one small (half-inch) divot has been chewed. Rather as if a sample was taken, and not liked.

The lemon tree is showing baffling resistance to damage. New buds and leaves are appearing in a few cases where I'm fairly sure there's a complete break in the bark between growth and roots. The last couple of days touched 90F, I'd expect what's going to live vs die to become clear fairly soon.

Earlier in the spring some adventitious growth appeared on the lower trunk, which I didn't want and removed. Now more would be good, and none has appeared. That's worrisome.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

Yes, sometimes citrus can recover from serious damage.

I have a dwarf lemon and a dwarf kumquat in very large flower pots. They are irrigated by drip emitters tied into my automatic (clock driven) garden sprinklers. Several years ago, we had a very wet winter; so I shut off the sprinkler system. Then we had a short period of frost. While the garden soil remained quite moist, the potting mix for my citrus apparently got dry, which resulted in frost damage to both trees (but strangely not to the potted orange). The lemon and kumquat both lost ALL of their leaves. I thought they were dead.

When the owner of the tree service I use came to determine the cost of pruning my ash, oak, and zelkova, I showed him the lemon and kumquat. He showed me that a little scratch on the bark indicated the branches were still green and alive.

The kumquat recovered completely and continued to give me good crops of fruit. The lemon recovered, but some major limbs have long stretches of dead bark with the live bark only halfway around. I recently picked over a dozen lemons, from which I got over a quart of lemon juice.

If you are near a creek, it could be a nutria. Also a small furry type but known to go for fruit trees.

Virginia Beach, being 'tidewater' has a bazillion creeks and small rivers flowing all through it. I couldn't find a good map but this gives a bit of an idea.

Nutria isn't an absolute impossibility, as they are known to be in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River drainage. But it would be a very great surprise: Nutria aren't credited with being climbers, and all the damage (so far!) is at least three feet above ground.

Given that I've seen at least two rats in the tree and I'm half a mile from the nearest watercourse (a drainage channel, at that) it's hard to blame nutria without better evidence.

I've added three new views of the tree to

The files are big and the host, a Raspberry Pi 3, is slow, so please be patient when loading the images....

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

It's becoming very unclear how to decide which branches are goners and which should be kept.

There are a few examples of well-hydrated new growth on branches that are clearly girdled on the rootward side. One in particular is obviously girdled an inch below and a foot above. There's no fruit connected by the remaining bark, from which water and sugars might be extracted.

Anybody got an idea what's going on? I thought all transport both up and down a truck was carried in the bark: No bark, no transport, branch dies. It looks as if there's at least some water transport upward in layers beneath the peelable bark.

Thanks for reading, and any ideas as to what's going on.

bob prohaska

Very good but techy article here that may help your understanding:

Indeed, it helps enormously. The crown is still getting water from the roots, but is unable to pay its "water bill". Clearly I should have removed all the ring barked branches immediately.

There will be some branches left, but far fewer than it appeared.

Thanks very much for writing!

bob prohaska

Think I would harvest the possibly larger than normal fruit on suspect branches first if you haven't already and then do the deed...

Doing it now, wishing I'd started sooner. In several places fairly big (3" circumference) limbs have less than a one-inch strip of bark connecting roots to crown.

In the article you cited at

I really hope that's true of lemons!

Kinda wishing I had a set of armored gloves, the damn tree bites!

bob prohaska

A bit warmish to wear... Welding gloves are well armored for such tasks and can sometimes be bought reasonably. Like HF stores. Even thin leather gloves work quite well. I do battle with Autumn Olives and Multiflora Rose on a regular basis😬

I should note that I used those Harbor Freight items as examples that look like the gloves I use. I don't own "those" items and after posting I noticed the reviews for them aren't so good🙁

I'm always on the lookout for deals on gloves like this along with a lot of other items. If I see some on clearance/sale for a great price I buy them...

The tree is very unevenly endowed with thorns. Much of it is thornless, allowing me to become incautious, parts are heavily spiked.

I've added three photos at

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

I'm in a very different climate here in SW Michigan so just some thoughts...

I'd remove everything that has been completely girdled and has no hope. Then wait and see what is going on with it next year or so. You can always cut out more then.

Keep doing what ever else you've done in the past (if anything) that has allowed it to get to where it is now😐

In case anybody's curious I've added a couple photos showing what I belive to be the completed pruning job. It's quite a haircut....

Now the problem is to control the regrowth to prevent, or at least slow down, the canopy's return to utter, impenetrable, chaos.

Thanks to all for reading and sharing wisdom!

bob prohaska

The recovery of the tree is proceeding apace, in rather disorderly fasion. Photos are:

Right now the root structure is appropriate to a tree about fifteen feet tall and maybe ten feet wide. That needs a certain amount of photosynthesis to remain healthy, likely far more than is supplied by the existing leaf area. That suggests leaving all growth alone initially and then progressively removing unwanted branches after some delay.

Anybody got a hint what an appropriate delay might be? Weeks, months? Maybe a year? Seems best to minimize the tree's wasted investment.

Thanks for looking, and any thoughts.

bob prohaska