You may want to post a picture of it to get some of the more knowledgeable members to chime in.

-Eric
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{{gwi:54837}}

Steve, it could be fireblight. I always thought it was not very common in dry areas like Colorado but it is everywhere to some degree. I don't know of any other disease that produces that orange ooze effect. Whatever it is, cut it all out pronto!

Scott

Yes, fireblight. Pretty rare here, especially this spring where we have not had hardly any rain. I googled to see some pics and indeed, that is what this tree has.

I will cut out the infected limb tomorrow as soon as it is light. and then use a copper based spray.

Only one tree has open flowers at this time, so with any luck it has not spread all that much. Unfortunately we are due to get several days of rainy, cold weather; so not ideal for keeping a spray on the trees, or combatting fireblight...

Would like to see an image before you amputate!

Fireblight rarely presents in association with dead wood, although it does produce it.

the answer is yes. with pics someone should be able to id the problem. also see if a local library has a copy of a book by symonds and lyon, diseases of trees and shrubs.

Opps, did not take any pics before I amputated the limb, and the limb is now burn in my wood stove (seemed like a good way to dispose of it).

However the description and visuals matched exactly the pics I had seen online, when I looked it up. (And even if it wasn't fireblight, it was some infection which was producing spores, so it needed to be removed)

Fire blight is not a big deal usually up in my location (8200'), due to colder temps and dry weather. However it can occur. One of the problems I have is this orchard was damaged 1.5 years ago during a wild fire. Lost quite a few trees, and many of the surviving trees had parts of them burned (usually the one side which faced the flames). There is bark damage on some of the surviving trees from the nearby heat of the fire. Those heat damaged areas look a bit like sun scald damage. And it occurs to me now that they may be masking fire blight (which may have entered the burned areas).

Which raises a good question, how can I tell whether these "burns" (or other scars/damage) are just normal injuries or are harboring fire blight? Waiting until the ooze starts is not the best idea, and several of the trees would not survive pruning out all the visible damage (if I were to err on the safe side). Are there any easy tests, or definitive way to spot a fire blight injury vs a normal and healing injury?

Steve, there isn't much you can do about it in any case so its probably not worth worrying about. Fire and fireblight both can leave very different scars depending on the heat/duration/etc of the fire and the intensity of the FB strike. Maybe if you stared at enough of them you could notice the different categories. It took me five years of staring to tell the difference between PC and OFM damage in peaches -- its pretty trivial now that I know what to look for, but it was impossible before that :-)

Scott