I am in the Houston area. Have 2 mature red oaks and 2 young ones. One of the young ones is already dropping brown leaves like it's November. The others are all still green. Should I be worried? The trunk looks healthy and they get the same water.
Not quite, the !Rootflare should look like what will populate in the comment below this one. You need to expose further & mulch will do so much good for all your trees. If they're all planted in the same manner, it's very likely they will all eventually exhibit similar symptoms & this is just the first one to react.
Hi /u/ohshannoneileen, AutoModerator has been summoned to provide some guidance on root flare exposure.
To understand what it means to expose a tree's root flare, do a subreddit search in r/arborists, r/tree, r/sfwtrees or r/marijuanaenthusiasts using the term root flare; there will be a lot of posts where this has been done on young and old trees. You'll know you've found it when you see outward taper at the base of the tree from vertical to the horizontal, and the tops of large, structural roots. Here's what it looks like when you have to dig into the root ball of a B&B to find the root flare. Here's a post from further back; note that this poster found bundles of adventitious roots before they got to the flare, those small fibrous roots floating around (theirs was an apple tree), and a clear structural root which is visible in the last pic in the gallery. See the top section of this 'Happy Trees' wiki page for more collected examples of this work.
Root flares on a cutting grown tree may or may not be entirely present, especially in the first few years. Here's an example.
See also the r/tree wiki 'Happy Trees' root flare excavations section for more excellent and inspirational work, and the main wiki for a fuller explanation on planting depth/root flare exposure, proper mulching, watering, pruning and more.
Bald Cypress in my neighbor’s back yard is already changing color, and some crape myrtles are partially defoliated already. I think it’s just autumn coming a bit early. I’m just east of Baton Rouge. We’ve had healthy normal amount of rain and relative to the last 5-10 years mild summer.
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u/Zenitharr 1d ago
Pic for reference