Dying Branches

[RC Maple]

I have noticed on 2 smaller sugar maples in my woods - about 4" dbh, that about August sometime about half of the branches had leaves that just started turning brown and dying. There are still branches on the tree that look fine but this all seemed to start just recently. Any ideas what might be the cause of this showing up?

[Michael Greer]

It could simply be a bit of overcrowding...they can't all make it. Last year, I had some trees die out, and my thought at the time was the long extremely dry summer we had.

[RC Maple]

One of the trees does have some other trees close to it but they are ash trees and they have been dead for a while. The other tree seems to have a nice little area of its own. I know I have got some places where I do have trees growing closer than I would like and I am going to try to move the ones I am able to. Thanks for the reply.

[Indiana-Jones]

RC, I have noticed the same here (southern Indiana)this fall, it appears as if some of the limbs and leaves died, just as dead as if the branch was sawed off. It didn't seem to make a differences if it was a city tree that had never been tapped or a tree that I have been tapping in the woods. The leaves turned brown, curled up and stayed on the tree. Some of the branches leaves turned yellow/red and fell like a normal on the same tree.

We had extreme drought conditions here in 2012 and a hot dry summer this year. I'm thinking that dry soil damaged the small fine roots that do a lot of the gathering and caused the tree some major stress.

I have only been sugaring for 3 years, so I have not been paying close attention to maples very long. But this don't seem normal. I'm thinking of setting this spring out and seeing what the trees do.

[Starting Small]

Here in CT I have noticed the same thing on 2 Norway maples in my yard. It has happened for the last 2 Summers.
-Dave

[RC Maple]

I will be watching those two trees next spring and summer to see what they do. They are the only trees I say that happen to fortunately.