Thursday, August 03, 2006

Mimosa

It doesn't matter how long you work in a certain field, there are always things to learn. I'm showing my ignorance, but today I had my first experience with Mimosa Wilt. This is a soil-borne disease which only affects mimosa trees.

Leaves will begin to yellow, wilt, and then drop off the tree. On the one I saw today, sap was oozing out of the tree where it made 2 foamy puddles at the base of the trunk. There was a definite fermenting odor, not pleasant-- and June bugs, yellow jackets, and flies were eating up the exuding sap.

When I got the call, my first reaction was 'someone actually wants one of these invasive plants to live?'. Most of the calls I get concerning mimosa are 'How do I kill it?'. I wasn't prepared. But come to find out, this disease is very common.

Maybe I've never gotten a call about this since anyone with an ailing mimosa tree wanted it to die anyway.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beth,
We live in CT and bought a house 2 years ago. It was overgrown with weeds, vines and trees. We cleaned it up and were very excited to start planting flowers and flowering trees. We chose to plant a Mimosa tree for its beauty despite the bad comments written about it. It didn't survive our first winter and we planted another. This one came back to life this summer and we watched it grow every day. We are very worried because at the base of the trunk there seems to be holes which are oozing sap. Is this Mimosa wilt? The tree appears fine except for this as far as the leaves go. We are worried that the tree will die. It is about 5-6 feet tall now. Can you offer any suggestions or comments? Help!