Frost Damage

About three weeks ago, we had a real hard frost here that really damaged the young leaves on all the trees. This only happened at 1800 feet elevation and above. The trees lower down in elevation have recovered well.
Latest observations show that many of the leaves have fallen off completely, or, for the ones remaining on the tree, are at half leaf at best.
Question is, Will these trees recover enough for next season? Or possibly sprout new leaves?
I can't believe that this would kill the trees, but feel that it must stress them
in some way.
Would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this....

Hear in Central NY we can see the same damage from the heavy frost we had around the same time. I was speaking with a DEC officer yesterday and he said it has done good and bad. The good is that the the Forest Tent Catapilers have been severly compromised, the bad is what you are seeing Killington Maple. It looks like the Oak and Beach have take the brunt of the damage. I am no expert but after watching the damage the Forest Tent Catapilers did to my woods last summer I think that most trees will recover. They will grow back leaves, smaller, but leaves just the same.

I see quite a few big maples that are quite brown right now and recall we had a hard frost well after the leaf out stage and expect this is the result of that frost. I am up in central Ontario and don't recall ever seeing this much before and think we are paying for the early spring now.

I am also wondering what effect the loss of the leaves will have on next years production since they are the little engines that produce our crop??

I think it may affect both the amount of sap as well as the sugar content, but.....

Has anyone read anything on this or experienced it before?

So far I guess I'm lucky. I see no frost damage however, FT caterpillars are here. They have not done too much damage yet. I hope their life cycle ends that soon and the trees can get to the business of making sugar. I see a few leaf skelitans but not many.

I walked around in the sugar bush this afternoon after the rain stopped and I found some small maple leaves on the ground in parts of the bush. Looking up into the tree tops I couldn't see that many leaves were lost, so I wouldn't think it should hurt the trees any. I would have thought the leaves would have been brown from the die back but the ones on the ground were green. Maybe some loss of sugar content next spring because the total leaf area of the tree will be smaller? Just wondering.

Homestead I have the same deal here going. What i took notice to today is I picked up some of those green leaves that are falling (not enough to be of concern yet) and noticed that the stems have been chewed on and my thoughts are what little tentworms or other critters are left are the cause. The frost damage really only effected the oaks here and the black walnut but other than that the maples look good. Go out tomarrow and pick some of those leaves up and take a peek at the stems Im betting you will see some teeth marks on the stems.

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Originally Posted by Killington Maple

Question is, Will these trees recover enough for next season? Or possibly sprout new leaves? I can't believe that this would kill the trees, but feel that it must stress them
in some way.

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Assuming there are no other major stress factors this summer (drought, insect defoliation, etc.), then the trees should refoliate and be OK. Might be somewhat less sugar in the sap next season, and maybe somewhat reduced basal area (ring-width) growth, but you'll probably not even notice it.

Generally tree mortality only occurs when you have some combination of interacting stresses that occur repeatedly or over an extended time period.

We had substantial frost damage here in Underhill too. Trees have already mostly refoliated.

we had extensive damage here in Bangor NY...many trees lost 80% of leaves, the remaining leaves must be repowering the refoliage, but I havent seen new leaves yet. IM spending a lot of time thinning and i find a lot more sunlight hitting the forest floor right now.

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Originally Posted by 3rdgen.maple

Homestead I have the same deal here going. What i took notice to today is I picked up some of those green leaves that are falling (not enough to be of concern yet) and noticed that the stems have been chewed on and my thoughts are what little tentworms or other critters are left are the cause. The frost damage really only effected the oaks here and the black walnut but other than that the maples look good. Go out tomarrow and pick some of those leaves up and take a peek at the stems Im betting you will see some teeth marks on the stems.

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I was talking with another sugar maker in the area today and he reminded me that we had a stong wind the other day and he said that his trees lost some small leaves during that time. I was away a few days so that's probably what I'm seeing on the ground right now. Anything that is brown is still in the tree tops so the trees must be hanging on to those yet and may not drop them. Thankfully I don't have many that got affected, just don't want the trees to be stressed.

We noticed it around here too. Some of the leaves on trees we planted last year were killed by the frost. I have noticed that they are popping new leaves now.

I heard last week that a sugar maker in NH wondered why his maple trees that were at a certain elevation seemed to have "fried" leaves. He went to the experts to find out what caused this and was told that the carbon emissions and other by-products from the Canadian wild fires this spring had affected a narrow band of trees south of these wild fires. That's a new one, considering trees from New York to Maine were affected, not just a narrow band.

I think it was caused by the late frost we had in the month of May. The leaves at a certain elevation were affected. Above this band, the leaves were not out enough to be affected, lower than this band the frost was not hard enough to freeze the leaves.

Most everyone that I had talked to about this agreed that it was a hard freeze that caused this and I agree. It's interesting what the experts had to say though.

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Originally Posted by Homestead Maple

Most everyone that I had talked to about this agreed that it was a hard freeze that caused this and I agree. It's interesting what the experts had to say though.

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I've only seen a short poster about this damage (at the NAMSC meeting in Ontario) which was putatively assigned to PAN pollution from the Canadian fires. Despite that conclusion, all the springtime damage that I've seen throughout areas of Vermont, NH, and upstate NY strongly appear to be freeze damage to me (and the first 10 yrs of my career were spent looking at freeze damage, although to red spruce instead of sugar maple). I've not been to the site these researchers looked at however, so will withhold judgement.

The damage at the site where the researchers visited was seen on sugar maple in other sites in Maine, Vermont, and New York and if I remember from those that reported, New Brunswick saw the same freeze. It also didn't seem to make sense that the damage to maple was at a certain elevation on the mountain sides and if it was due to the fires it would have affected maple at a wider elevation band, or would the toxic smoke layer only be so thick? The researchers said that only a narrow path of trees in NH were affected but maple tree leaf damage reports came in from a number of states.

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Originally Posted by Homestead Maple

The damage at the site where the researchers visited was seen on sugar maple in other sites....

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I can't comment on the specific site and damage they refer to, not having been there to see it myself. But I agree that it is unusual to think that with all the other damage around the northeast that occurred at the same time having been caused by freezing, that this one site would be due to something very different, yet all the other sites were also exposed to the same or similar levels of pollution.

I don't know how sensitive other tree leave types might be but it was interesting that only (from all reports that I heard) sugar maples were affected. Maybe it had to do with the growth stage at the time.

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Originally Posted by Homestead Maple

I don't know how sensitive other tree leave types might be but it was interesting that only (from all reports that I heard) sugar maples were affected. Maybe it had to do with the growth stage at the time.

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It has more to do with the phenological stage than anything else. When leaves first break out of their buds, they are quite sensitive to freezing temperatures. While still in the buds they are not....and once they are fully enlarged they are more hardy. That is why only certain elevational ranges got hit. It was the a combination of being in the right stage of leaf emergence and growth, as well as cold temperatures that did them in.

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Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins

Assuming there are no other major stress factors this summer (drought, insect defoliation, etc.), then the trees should refoliate and be OK. Might be somewhat less sugar in the sap next season, and maybe somewhat reduced basal area (ring-width) growth, but you'll probably not even notice it.

Generally tree mortality only occurs when you have some combination of interacting stresses that occur repeatedly or over an extended time period.

We had substantial frost damage here in Underhill too. Trees have already mostly refoliated.

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This is the only thread that came up when I searched for drought stress. Not only do we have very dry conditions, we had some 85 mph winds come through 2 weeks ago and cause a lot of damage - uprooted trees and limbs everywhere. I lost a couple of 24" trees that just blew over or broke off. Some of the sugar maples around have some leaves that are looking more brown than green. Our last drought here was 2002 and I wasn't paying as much attention to tree leaves as I was to corn and soybeans. Are these browning leaves a typical response and they're just suffering like the rest of us? Do they have a semi- dormant stage they go into like the lawn? I know some of these trees are older than I am and have seen it all before. Would anyone care to comment on what they've seen or know about trees handling these stresses?