By Rachelpearce
United Kingdom 
Help. About three years ago my flowering fruiting tree developed dry brown leaves and shrivelled fruit. I think it was a crab apple variety. The tree was large and i put it down to old age! I replaced it with a malus golden hornet planted in the same area of the garden. The same thing has happened and looking online i wonder if the trees have had fire blight. The malus is about 4 years old and 8feet tall. The bark looks in good condition. Can i save the tree? What should i do
Thank you. Rachel Pearce
9 Aug, 2013
Answers
Thank you. I will do some pruning to see what may be in the stem wood and give the tree time. Hope it can b saved
Rachel p
13 Aug, 2013
The tree will recover, but, lets make sure what it is. Fireblight (bacterial, where the stems are also often affected and develop sunken patches), or blossom wilt (fungal), which is similar, but less devastating. Either way, any treatment is the same - remove any affected flowers, leaves, young stems, and burn them. With fireblight, the only hope is to cut back affected stems to clean wood, where the inner wood is free from any staining and hope the new growth doesn't get infected. The tree may still go downhill over a few years and die.
Weather plays a huge part in the spread of both, damp weather at the critical time (spring for blossom wilt and mid- to late spring for fireblight) providing the right conditions and rain spreading the problems.
12 Aug, 2013