Maple trees dropping leaves left and right.

I am in Ohio right by the Lake Erie and I was also thinking how strange it was for the leaves to be "falling" this soon. It is not just the maple trees, it is all the trees in this area. Makes you wonder!!

Originally posted by starlitestarbrite
We live in North East PA and we have had horrible weather here this summer
maybe 2 weeks of 90 degree plus temps then that was it.We have had extreme amounts
of rain.

Our seasons have completely changed. August has been cold and wet when it's normally
very hot and dry.We barely have a spring here anymore.We have had our heat on in the house
well into mid June of this year and have turned on the heat again this week which is way
out of the ordinary.

I have a garden in full sun of tomato plants that are full of green tomatoes, but not one ripe one
in the bunch.

Coming out of this winter we noticed 4 maples that were dead in our back yard
that were alive before we went into last winter. I do notice on all 4 of the trees
lichen has taken over the trunks.

The leaves of our maples are turning already in some areas of NEPA.
Our maples look sickly this year my only thoughts is to much water??
For sure I feel a change coming.
Sadly my area was hit very hard by Gypsy Moth caterpillers the last couple years
so the oaks are suffering also.
I would like to know whats going on too.

My tomatoes just refuse to turn red as well!
Last year I had more than I could keep up with, all red beautiful fruit. This year... early blight
They just stay green, then rot. A strange season for gardening in my area that is for sure.

Originally posted by tinker9917
There is a Native American prophecy that in the end of times the maple will trees will die from the tops down

Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, tells a story of Seneca chief Handsome Lake, who in 1799, brought to his people the visions and revelations from his journeys. "Handsome Lake said, 'They said the maple tree, the leader of all trees, will begin dying from the top down and nobody will know how to deal with it,'

www.thepeoplespaths.net...

That is very interesting. I'd like to know the rest of his journeys. The native Americans have always had visions of events taking place in the future, and they were always in touch with nature. It's too bad that most visions of the future are of unpleasant things to come.

Here is a thread I started a couple of months ago about things being off:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I just made a road trip, and in some parts of Kansas, and Oklahoma, it looked like fall had already set it, but not everywhere, but there were a lot of trees and patches of trees dieing, really big/old trees. Some of them were pine trees too, which are usually pretty hardy. I just blamed it on the drought in those areas. Here in Nebraska, the maples in our back yards are either dieing or changing early too.

reply to post by Iwinder


Ummm, I am thinking does autumn come after summer?
Yeah I think it does...
Autumn

I don't know what's causing it, but here on the west coast, Iv noticed the maple leaves turning red and orange, and dropping to the ground mid July... So no... it's not because Autumn is just around the Conner. It's the middle of summer, and I noticed it the beg of summer... I pointed it out to some friends, but nobody really seems to notice anything....
The leaves start to turn end of Sept, beg of Oct... maybe even until early Nov... but beg of Aug, and July?? How can anyone say that's usual??

Fall starts in the Northern Hemisphere on September 23, 2011, at 5:05 A.M. (EDT).
I have lived in Ohio my whole life and this is not normal for this time of year.
There is something uncomfortable and unsettling in the air..Mother Nature is agitated.

Originally posted by Minori
Fall starts in the Northern Hemisphere on September 23, 2011, at 5:05 A.M. (EDT).
I have lived in Ohio my whole life and this is not normal for this time of year.
There is something uncomfortable and unsettling in the air..Mother Nature is agitated.

Yes, exactly! I can't put my finger on it but I feel it, that something is just not right, or, as you wrote, "unsettling." I have lived in the same area for 42 years and have gardened for almost 20 of those years. This year is just different than anything I can remember. I am not saying different good or different bad.
Just different.

Originally posted by Skorpiogurl

Originally posted by starlitestarbrite

I have a garden in full sun of tomato plants that are full of green tomatoes, but not one ripe one
in the bunch.

My tomatoes just refuse to turn red as well!
Last year I had more than I could keep up with, all red beautiful fruit. This year... early blight

They just stay green, then rot. A strange season for gardening in my area that is for sure.

Me too, i have always a few (8) Tomato Plants,
always different kinds on my Balcony
as well as on my Rooftop,
this is the first Year i got none, not even a Fruitbody

Also i started this Year to use Cucumber Plants for the use of Shade
because of Energy-Saving, only two small Fruit-Bodies on 5 Plants!

reply to post by Skorpiogurl


I tend to take my cues from nature. I have always said that if I ever see a mass migration of animals happening I will be right along with them. And my garden as well did not produce much of anything, I was thinking I did something wrong, maybe I did....or maybe not.

Originally posted by wayno

Originally posted by filosophia
Just because the well is working doesn't mean the tree might have water loss, the well could be getting water below the root level.

One would presume that Iwinder is using the well water to water his trees. At least that is how I took it.

You are correct Wayno, we only use our well water for the yard, it is not for consumption.
We basically have part of Lake Huron right under our property. You cannot lower the water table here unless you empty the lake first.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by ldyserenity
reply to post by Iwinder

 

Ummm, I am thinking does autumn come after summer?
Yeah I think it does...
Autumn

Yes I know that autumn follows summer, but autumn does not arrive in late July here in Ontario.
Thanks for the schooling.
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by Human0815


Yup! and also my zucchini got dozens of flowers and is extremely healthy but I only got like two zucchini's. The flowers are still on the plant.... over a month later... but they won't produce anything. Very strange.

Originally posted by Aircooled
www.youtube.com.../u/0/EBfvkCEr-Is
An independent radiation video from Torornto. You won't see this on the CBC. Oh yeah....Upper Ottawa Valley.

Thanks for the post and the link there Aircooled, much appreciated and I have never seen that video before.
If his instrument is accurate then that speaks volumes.
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by Jana12

Good post Jana12, I agree with the fact that people are just not paying attention anymore.
I see a lot of posters here in my thread who spend a good amount of time in their yards/outdoors.
These posters are taking notice of their surroundings while the masses sit in front of the tube mesmerized by Lady Gaga or whatever.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by justagirl
We live in North Dakota, USA. We don't have maples ourselves, like the OP mentioned, but our trees are all dropping leaves like crazy, and began in late July (though not as many were dropping then) they aren't turning colors. Just dropping off green. We have had lots of rain, so it's not lack of water.

I see we are getting the same reports from all over the place here.
Nothing to worry about right?
Thanks for adding to my thread.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by midwest
I can confirm it's happening in Missouri as well. I was in the northern part of the state a few weeks ago visiting relatives. Not long after I got to their house I noticed out the window that leaves were falling like crazy. There was a storm kicking up and blowing in and it was causing the tree leaves to fall like crazy. It wasn't much of a storm, just got the trees swaying a little bit, probably nothing much over 30-35mph. But it was raining leaves like none other, and that was before it started raining. That's how I knew the storm was coming in. I went outside to see what was going on. Now I wish I had taken a video on my iPhone. Sure, windy storms usually cause some leaves to blow off. But this was a lot.

And yes I've experienced quite a few storms in my day. I'm a trained storm spotter and experienced the north end of the storm that went through Joplin (what a crazy storm, papers from Joplin falling out of the sky). It's not normal for trees to shed leaves like that in early August around these parts. More like mid October. I think I might call some relatives tomorrow to see if they've noticed any more oddities. I haven't paid much attention to the trees lately as I've been swamped with work, but I'll make sure to check things out tomorrow.

Glad you added the fact that you are a trained spotter, please do keep an eye on your trees there and get back to us here if something seems odd to you.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by axslinger
Just to pipe in and share my own observation...

I live in AZ and trees here are stubborn to lose their leaves in the fall. It's not unusual for a Mulberry tree to take half the winter to finally lose all of it's leaves. However, in the last week I noticed quite a few leaves on the ground beneath a Mulberry tree right outside my door and definitely found it odd. My gut response was simply, "...that's weird, we're still in the middle of August, I wonder what's up with that."

I'm no botanist but I was always under the impression that it was the length of the days that caused trees to lose their leaves in the fall. I didn't believe it was temperature related because I've seen some long, drawn out summers where the trees lost their leaves like they normally did. Conversely, I've seen some pretty cold, miserable summers in Northern Michigan where the trees didn't lose their leaves prematurely.

Thanks very much for the great post and your observations, we have one flowering Chinese shrub I not sure of the name but it is a stubborn one to drop its leaves.
I usually end up out in the snow picking them up. It will be interesting to see what it does when fall arrives here.
Regards, Iwinder

Good morning everyone. There is a tendency when people first recognize that leaves are damaged and trees are dying to look towards extraordinary explanations. Last year there were hundreds of people posting on forums and making youtube videos blaming what they saw on the oil spill in the Gulf and corexit. There are also many people who blame a government contrail conspiracy, and some blame HAARP, and now, Fukushima.

The widespread decline PRECEDED the Gulf spill and Fukushima. And it's much easier for many of us to blame some evil secret cabal for what is happening, because the fact is, it is EACH and EVERY ONE OF US who is causing the ecosystem to collapse, every time we use electricity or drive our car or fly in a plane. There is no need to postulate fantastical, unsubstantiated theories when is has been known for decades that air pollution kills plants. The only reason to do so is that we are afraid, and we don't want to sacrifice the comfort that we have derived from cheap, dirty energy.

We are filling the atmosphere with toxic volatile organic compounds from fuel emissions, that go through complex chemical reactions and produce ozone, which is poisonous to all forms of life. The background levels are increasing, and the gas travels across oceans and continents. Years ago scrubbers were put on coal plants to remove sulfer dioxide, the visible pollutant in smog. But there's no way to remove the precursors for ozone and that's why regulatory agencies do very little about it.

The only good thing that we can take away from this is that we KNOW the trees are dying and the crops are not producing - and so we should demand that our government stop subsidizing coal and oil and "natural" (methane" gas and instead subsidize solar, wind, geothermal, and excellent mass transportation.

Here's an excerpt from a book called "Environmental Pollution and Plant Responses":

Tropospheric O3 has long been defined as a phytotoxin. Much plant physiological research has been conducted in recent years on the reaction of woody plant species to tropospheric O3. Ozone has been suggested to cause the greatest amount of damage to vegetation as compared with any gaseous pollutant and its relative importance may still increase because of the decline in the occurrence of other air pollutants. Furthermore, O3 is considered as the most widespread of all atmospheric air pollutants. Many studies show that ambient O3 concentrations are potentially high enough to cause significant reductions in growth and yields of agricultural crops and trees. In this chapter, the overall responses and reactions of woody plants to tropospheric O3 levels are discussed at different hierarchical levels of organization based on an extensive, recent literature review.

That's posted on my blog entry here: witsendnj.blogspot.com... along with pictures. At the top, if you click on "Basic Premise" there are dozens of links to published scientific research about ozone's impacts on vegetation. It's probably just about the biggest elephant in the room, ever.

It's really wonderful that people are finally recognizing this global problem. Identifying a problem is a first and essential step towards solving it, and we really need to solve this, because plants, in addition to being the base of our food chain, also happen to produce the oxygen we need to breathe.

Gail, at Wit's End