{"id":5563,"date":"2013-10-06T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=5563"},"modified":"2013-10-05T20:43:07","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T00:43:07","slug":"too-early-fall-color-a-telltale-signal-of-tree-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2013\/10\/06\/too-early-fall-color-a-telltale-signal-of-tree-in-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Early Fall Color A Telltale Signal Of Tree In Trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

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'Red Sunset' Maples Coloring In Late September in Tennessee (photo by Ken Soergel) <\/p><\/div>
\nEarly leaf color or premature leaf drop often tells a property owner that their tree(s) may not be healthy. Photo above, taken in front of a new subdivision, says alot. Large red maples show leaf color weeks ahead of their natural timeline. Notice the narrow median where the trees are planted.<\/p>\n

The cause of early foliage change may be weather-related, a foliar or root disease, an earlier insect infestation, or a site with one or more environmental factors. Extremes of either a dry or a wet summer (flooding) may lead to premature leaf drop or early fall leaf color. Urban air pollutants can be blamed.<\/p>\n

In this landscape situation (photo), red maples were the wrong tree choice for the site. Red maple is nicknamed “swamp maple”; you find the species naturally growing along streams, and near lakes and ponds. Red maple has a notoriously shallow root system, a network of surface roots that destroy a home lawn or lift sidewalks. <\/p>\n

In this example, on an obvious dry soil site, crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia spp.<\/em>), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua<\/em>), elms (Ulmus spp<\/em>.), Chanticleer pear (Pyrus calleryana<\/em>), hornbeams (Carpinus spp<\/em>.), or yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea<\/em>) would have been better tree choices. <\/p>\n

A professional landscaper should have known that the tree choice was wrong. Unfortunately, mistakes like this are all too common.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early leaf color or premature leaf drop often tells a property owner that their tree(s) may not be healthy. Photo above, taken in front of a new subdivision, says alot. Large red maples show leaf color weeks ahead of their natural timeline. Notice the narrow median where the trees are planted. The cause of early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[922,910,914,879,5,1051,616,953,843,603,777,781,7,714],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5563"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5573,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5563\/revisions\/5573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}