I have planted about 40 trees in my yard over the years and most of them are now dying. They appear to have some disease. We've had a very wet spring here and I wonder if the excess water in the ground has allowed something to make them sick. Or maybe it is a parasite of some kind, I don't know. Take a look a these pictures and tell me what you think it might be and how I should treat it.

I seem to have the same condition on several different trees - white oak, red oak, hickory, river birch, apple, bald cypress, and even a forsythia bush.

Here's an apple tree with spots all over the leaves:



Here's a pic of a bald cypress tree with leaves turning brown:



Here's a picture of the leaves of a red oak:



These are the leaves of white oak that was growing well last summer:



More white oak leaves:


Here's a picture of brown spots on the stem of new growthe on a white oak:

herbicide over spray?

The apple tree is cedar Apple rust I believe. The others are abiotic, so environmental. Did you fertilize them, they appear to be scorched.

No fertilizer. When my boys are out in the yard, they pee on the trees sometimes. That's about it. I know they didn't pee on the apple trees because they are too far out of the yard where they play.

I did spray some Bonide Fruit Tree Spray on some of the trees last year - particularly the apple trees. But not all of the sick trees this year received the Fruit Tree Spray last year. I haven't sprayed anything on them this spring.

My neighbor is pretty careful about applying his herbicide and I don't think he sprayed the fields around me until last week. It's been a really wet spring and they are just recently getting tractors in the field. The appearance of these problems began before he sprayed the fields around me. Some of the problem trees are at the center of the yard. The spray would have had to drift quite a long distance to reach those trees.

My rhubarb and peonies right next to the Forsythia bush do not show any signs of getting hit with herbicide. They look great. I guess the herbicide could affect some plants more than others. But I would think rhubarb and peonies would be more susceptible to herbicides than a 15 foot tall river birch tree.

When's the last time you gave them a hug?

Not funny I know.

The Cypress I would look into "needle blight" because of all the water you mentioned. Also might want to look into Cypress Canker, which is spore but grows rapidly in moist conditions, so I've read.

Herbicide damage is horrible anymore. I grow grapes, that are right in there with tomatoes for being affected by herbicide drift. I had a spraying incident last year that killed a bunch of my vines. It burned a couple of onimental pear trees so bad, you can see it both in the leaves and how they bloomed this spring. I lost an apple tree this spring, after it budded out, then just collasped and died...of course my favorite gala apple tree. You must understand that when you get drift, it don't just kill everything. It swirls around, kinda like smoke, and will kill one plant here and one there. I've lost a total of 12 grapes total, and quite a few that lost a whole cordon on one side, where it didn't kill the whole plant. What damaged my stuff was 24D with a mix of Toridon. They are now using (farmers) Diacamba and 24D ready soybeans and corn, and spraying that poison all over. It is kinda the last straw, as it is killing all kinds of stuff for folks that don't want any part of it, and the drift will go for miles on the right kinds of days. I told the folks that killed my stuff, there won't be another time of this where they get a free pass, I'm going for the juggler next time it happens!

Is there such a thing as farm advisers anymore, if so maybe they could tell you. We had a guy that sprayed roundup by airplane in a wet year and all the trees in the fence rows looked similar to that, most grew out of it. If he had 2-4d added to it I didn't smell it. Even nitrogen could burn them some. Wind carries that much farther than one would think. Its one of those deals where you need a knowledgeable person on hand to see. Did you have a hard frost after they leaved out? Is there is any problems with others in the area?

Agree with Foxpaw should have a county extension agent around somewhere that can help check with your county seat herbicide burndown should affect all the plants the same and theres more rusts, blights, mildews and such out there then can be imagined cold wet weather makes them worse normally seen in the fall but nobody cares then

Contact the St. Agriculture Commission to report it. Do it right away....I waited too long. They come out and document it, take pics and samples and will advocate for you in court. This is getting to be a serious problem, since they started with the Diacamba and 24D ready gmo stuff!

When I talked to the applicator, sprayed by aircraft, he just said, "so sue me". I knew I had waited too long, because I wasn't sure how to proceed, and the worst part, alot of the damage won't show up till the next spring, when the come out of dormancy!

My fruit trees in Washington state would get like that after a real damp spring. Read this -

https://www.planetnatural.com/pest-problem-solver/plant-disease/leaf-curl/

The apple tree does look like cedar rust. Lee is right about dicamba and 24d. They volatilize which is a gas form. There are specific times they can apply dicamba in a lot of states. Early morning and evening. You think applicators with thousand of acres to spray are going to abide by these times? It's a hush hush thing. When studying herbicide labels look for esters.

My next door neighbor has all the crop fields around me on all 4 sides. I know he really tries hard to prevent any overspray of his chemicals. If the damage is from herbicide, I would be heartbroken but wouldn't have any hard feelings against my farmer neighbor. It's just hard for me to believe the herbicide damage would effect only some of the trees in my yard and not my garden or many other plants in the yard - or that it would show up the following spring instead of the year when the plants were exposed.

I contacted the county extension office and friend of my who was a botanist for the DNR. But, I haven't heard back from them yet.

Acid Rain.

These are all fungal issues and wont kill your trees. The apple has apple scab, the oaks appear to have anthracnose and it's hard to tell on the taxodium but I'd assume fungal as well. All can be treated with fungicide applications starting at bud break. We have a record rainfall this year and cold temps which leads to fungal outbreaks. I spray hundreds of trees every year for these issues.

It will not take killing very many trees before he loses the cavalier attitude. It is common for shade trees in yards to be valued at 1,000 dollars per year, so a 100 year old Oak can easily be valued at 100,000 dollars... kill a couple yards full of those and he better hope to have 5+ million dollar insurance plan.

Do some investigating of trees in nearby and not so nearby properties. Look for the same species of trees which were affected on your property.
Assuming that every property which you will be looking at has similar soil type as you, there should be several affected the same as yours if the cause is environmental (too wet).

I have seen that before here in Indiana, I would bet they got frostbite. It got cold after some stuff was leafed out. I have a hackberry that I thought was dead last week because it had no leaves. The buds must have gotten frozen. Now new little leaves are coming out. I saw some of that before on my sawtooth oaks I planted after a frost too.

Wet, cool, fungus is my first thought. It should however be apparent in your neighbors trees as well.

Are there any particular fungicides you would recommend?

We dropped under our zone for a week this winter. Guy at the garden shop we frequent says that the below zone temps killed a lot of trees.

Told me this after I inquired about apple, cherry,and peach trees.

Anthracnose, look it up


WS

I can all but guarantee that it is not fungus on all of the different species which you have listed as damaged. Fungi are host specific as well as relatively rare to begin with. It would be exceedingly rare (bordering on absolutely impossible) for 3 to 4 different types of fungi to simultaneously attack 3 to 4 different species of plants at the very same time.
As far as what fungicide to use, the window of opportunity for control of the fungus has long passed. The damage would already have been done.
A late frost, as Flipper suggested would be a more likely cause of this kind of damage since it was across multiple species.

If it is herbicide drift you need to contact your state agriculture asap. They should have a department to investigate claims like yours. They will take samples and analyze them for chemicals.

Our neighbor had his beans sprayed by airplane for aphids one summer and the drift came across road and contaminated all my yard and garden. The chemical they used had on label not to go into field for a week.

I was in my living room when I heard and saw plane go by and saw the chemical mist drift onto my yard. I documented everything I could, time, color of plane, wind speed, wind direction. I then contacted the state and they came out and took samples and tested them. The pilot denied hurting my garden until the day after we both got the chemical analysis report back that said all my produce had been contaminated with the pesticide he was using. He wrote me a check the next day.

If I had not been home that day I would never have known any of my garden and yard had been sprayed.

We are poisoning ourselves with all these chemicals especially when not applied with utmost care.