Another Queen Splitting

[oliver]

This one is different from Walt's. We have seen alot of Queens dying in our area over the past 3 or 4 years. There seem to be several different problems/diseases going around, but this one has affected 3 of mine and at least 100 or so that I have noticed in the community over the past 2-3 years. Seems to be a slowish process. This tree has about 20 ft of trunk and was planted with a healthy 10 ft trunk about 12 years ago. Never had any problems with cold. We have not had any cold in 2 years, but I noticed last summer, that there were an excessive number of dead, yellow fronds hanging. This is how it looks a year after first showing some signs of trouble. Notice the vertical fissures going all the way up the trunk. I have a feeling this has something to do with some kind of bug. There are some ants running up and down, however I doubt that they are the primary problem. Again, I have seen this same picture in dozens, if not hundreds of healthy adult queens in this area recently. And for those queen haters, they can look nice if healthy, but I am not going to cry when this one hits the ground. Will plant something a little nicer in its place. Just wondrin if anybody knows what this is??

[Walt]

I'd say there's a good chance your queen has ganoderma butt rot or Texas Phoenix Palm Decline.

(TPPD).

If it has gano, do you seen any mushroom-like conchs on the lower trunk? Any brownish weeping stains?

I've lost six mature queen palm within the last two years to ganoderma butt rot.

The first signs were excessive prematurely dying fronds and off-color green fronds. Newer fronds weren't fully opening.

One of my queen palms (actually, the first one that died of gano) had vertical lines going up the trunk at first. Then, after so many weeks or months the trunk started to shrivel and collapse inward between the vertical lines, I guess because the trunk was rotting within.

I had a tree company come in and cut down all my dead and dying queen palms last year. Once they cut the trunks off you could see how brown they were inside.

I still have one dying (from gano) queen palm that I will have removed soon.

Your queen palms may have TPPD. Theysymptoms are death of new flowers (inflorescence), then rapidly dying lower fronds, turning brown very fast (not the typical yellowing first), then the spear (unopened frond) dies (meaning the growth bud is dead). The trunk is probably rotted.

There is not cure for either Ganoderma butt rot or TPPD.

TPPD has reached Florida, but so far I haven't heard of any documented cases of it in my county, have so in surrounding counties.

Walt

[Walt]

Also, I forgot to add, push on the trunk in various places and see if it feels spongy. If so, then that is a sure sign the trunk is rotting from either TPPD or gano.

[oliver]

Thanks Walt. I will look for some of the other signs you mentioned. We definitely have TPPD in the area. There are virtually no remaining Phoenix in this area. The only one that you really still see are roebelenii. As far as conch like growths, it is funny that yoo mentioned that. I noticed a few weeks ago, some weird fungal conch's coming out of the cracks in the ashphalt of the parking lot, just below where that particular tree is.

[Walt]

Oliver: Some palms infected with gano don't show conchs. The queen palm in the below photo has no visibel conchs nor brownish weeping stains -- but it's definitely got gano and is in its final stages of life. I plan to have the palm removed within a few weeks.

Last year about this time I planted a small queen palm in the same bed (surrounded by formed curbing) as the infected palm. Later in the year I planted a small Serenoa repens and also a smalll Sabal etonia, both I grew from seed.

Now I have three species of palms from three separate genera to see how long it will take (hopefully never) before they become infected with ganoderma butt rot. So far no signs of problems. I've read most infected palms are older ones, so maybe young palms are more resistant to the disease.

Above: The last of seven mature gandoderma butt rot infected queen palms. All seven of these palms came from the same nursery.