Viburnum Nana help please

Sep 22, 2009 7 Replies

My 12+ year old Viburnum Nana has shed all it's leaves already. When I knelt to get a closer look, it has what appears to galls or cankers all over the base of the stems.



Any thoughts on the problem - my googling as been fruitless. I'm fond of that little shrub and would hate to lose it.


Cheryl (Southern NH, nasty winter winds.)



I'm sorry that I only have bad news for you.

Apparently, Viburnums are susceptible to crown gall, a bacterial infection, and it cannot be cured. You will have to remove your infected plant and replace it with some other type of shrub which is not susceptible to crown gall.

Crown gall (this is a .pdf file that require Adobe

formatting link

put a shrub there again, I didn't want to lose the little guy.

Thanks Pat.

Cheryl

Cheryl Isaak;865242]On 9/23/09 6:33 AM, in article

snipped-for-privacy@Pat-Kiewicz.news.eternal-september.org, "Pat Kiewicz"

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

- Cheryl Isaak said:-

My 12+ year old Viburnum Nana has shed all it's leaves already. When I-

knelt- to get a closer look, it has what appears to galls or cankers all over the

base of the stems.

Any thoughts on the problem - my googling as been fruitless. I'm fond of

that little shrub and would hate to lose it.-

I'm sorry that I only have bad news for you.

Apparently, Viburnums are susceptible to crown gall, a bacterial infection,

and it cannot be cured. You will have to remove your infected plant and

replace it with some other type of shrub which is not susceptible to crown

gall.

Crown gall (this is a .pdf file that require Adobe

formatting link
's what I was afraid of - while I was planning to move it again and not

put a shrub there again, I didn't want to lose the little guy.

Thanks Pat.

Cheryl

not sure about this plant but we did have a euonymous shrub that had crown gall and i gave it a five pound bag of sugar in the early spring. i mixed the sugar in a pail of water and just poured it over the plant but especially around the base and on the galls and the shrub did okay. we finally ended up pulling it out after a good number of yrs because it was really getting old

and we didnt want it any longer. dont know if the sugar would work for your shrub or not r but might be worth a try. good luck. cyaaaaaa, sockiescat.

Why sugar? Extra energy for the roots?

Well, if I end up with a hole in the "woods" (aka the dumping ground), I'll put the Nana there and try that in the spring.

C

- Cheryl Isaak;865242]- Cheryl Isaak said:-

My 12+ year old Viburnum Nana has shed all it's leaves already. When I- knelt- to get a closer look, it has what appears to galls or cankers all over

the base of the stems.

Any thoughts on the problem - my googling as been fruitless. I'm fond of that little shrub and would hate to lose it.-

I'm sorry that I only have bad news for you.

Apparently, Viburnums are susceptible to crown gall, a bacterial infection, and it cannot be cured. You will have to remove your infected plant and replace it with some other type of shrub which is not susceptible to crown gall.

Crown gall (this is a .pdf file that require Adobe

formatting link
's what I was afraid of - while I was planning to move it again and

not put a shrub there again, I didn't want to lose the little guy.

Thanks Pat.

Cheryl

not sure about this plant but we did have a euonymous shrub that had crown gall and i gave it a five pound bag of sugar in the early spring.

i mixed the sugar in a pail of water and just poured it over the plant

but especially around the base and on the galls and the shrub did okay.

we finally ended up pulling it out after a good number of yrs because it

was really getting old and we didnt want it any longer. dont know if the sugar would work for your shrub or not r but might be

worth a try. good luck. cyaaaaaa, sockiescat.

-

Why sugar? Extra energy for the roots?

Well, if I end up with a hole in the "woods" (aka the dumping ground), I'll

put the Nana there and try that in the spring.

C

Cheryl im not really sure how it works but it seemed to help shrink the galls on our euonymous shrub. the only thing i can think of is either it gives

extra energy to the roots as u mentioned or it maybe gives the galls something to feed on besides the shrub itself. other than that i really

cant tell u. cyaaaaaaa, sockiescat:).

Thank you all for your suggestions and experiences. I can rule out some of the suggested culprits. We don't have coyotes, possums or raccoons in this country and no moose, cockatoos nor yet koalas. There are no wild deer in this area either. The nature of the fencing around the garden (evergreen hedge about ten feet high, with wire fencing in places) rules out anything larger than about fox (or very small kid) size (though kids could open the gate. Maybe foxes could too ? they?re said to be clever, aren?t they?  ). Or something with wings.

I took SteveB?s advice and did a more detailed investigation and I have some progress to report. I found a faeces dropping nearby that I can?t identify. I looked up fox droppings and this doesn?t really look like them. It?s an amorphous mass about the area of a CD, grayish-brown and the consistency of a smooth paté. It could be a dog dropping. Do dogs eat apples? Would one dog take about 40 apples (and leave none behind on the ground)?

Anyway, SteveB, thank you for the laugh, preceded by shock, that I got when I read the following lines in your post (about the coyote), the shock being due to the position of the line break:

? I found out later that it had eaten a turkey, a cat, and a kid :o

goat ?

Thank you all, Hector.

There's a couple of kids down there I'm sorry he missed.

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