My trees seem to have liked the drought

[elizilla]

The flowering crab apple trees in my yard have no fruit this year. Strangely enough, though, they seem happier. The older one usually loses a lot of leaves by now, and starts to look kinda defoliated. This year, it's still well leafed out. The maple tree is also happier this year than last - it got some disease last year where black spots appeared on the leaves and wilted them. This year, it has a few leaves with those black spots but it doesn't seem to be wilting them, and there aren't very many leaves with spots.

I'm not trying to grow fruit or tree diseases, so if the drought reduced those, I can live with that. And it's sure a good year for big healthy leaves that stay attached.

Comments

[a smith (from livejournal.com)]

it's possible that the crab apple didn't fruit in order to conserve energy.

[snowstormgirl.livejournal.com]

In Ludlow, Massachusetts

The crab apple trees here have been cut down and dug up in attempt to remove them, however they stubbornly hang on and in trimming them (the bushes) I found them fruiting happily away these perfectly hard round chartruse balls.