Mabel:

I looked at the photo of your cherry tree trunk, and it is indeed horrible. In fact, it looks like disaster on a 4-year old tree, since I don't see how a cherry tree would ever heal from such an injury in that location.

This looks more like freeze damage to me than anything else. I have seen bark splits from freeze/thaw cycles in early spring, but the way your bark has peeled back is beyond anything I have seen before. If there is minor insect activity, it is opportunistic, and I don't believe it caused the split, nor do I think sunscald could have done this.

I think I would be planting a new tree about now, since the prognosis for this one is not good.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Hi Don,

Thanks for sharing your wisdom, I appreciate your help even if it is bad news. I think we are going to take the tree down this weekend. Now I'm debating about replacing it with a peach tree, as the Jan and Joel bush cherries I planted this year are doing really well.

Mabel

"What caused the injury(ies)"

Mabel,

Montmorency is said to be good to -40F but not under every circumstance. There are so many things that have to be just right for your tree to be healthy enough to survive that limit. For example a tree that has begun to become stressed can become infected easier with bacteria P.S. short for "Psuedomonas syringae", which is an opportunistic disease. Once stressed and established these bacterias then try to kill plant cells in the way diseases do and the P.S. bacterias do "ice nucleate" adjacent plant cells. This means that the cells that are otherwise prepared to survive much colder than below freezing temperatures are less able to because the cells get injected with compounds that favor ice crystallization at closer temperatures to the normal freezing of water, when then the cells will freeze and burst.

I would say most extension services are really not prepared to advise all the things you must do (tree health) because this can become a rather involved project in some weather locals and even soil types. You can't always rely on spraying to prevent initial infection sites because many of them have got specialized and resist the chemicals. I would be prepared to tell you to burn the tree after you've eaten the cherries, or at least surgically torch all the open diseased area.

And if it is the disease I truly think it is (it happened in the same way to my cherry in Alaska) planting a peach (lower 48 peach experiences) will give you the same maintenance requirements because they are just as susceptible or more, to the same disease as cherries. But if you DO plant peach I've heard about a new peach rootstock bred in N.J. called 'Guardian' that has in trials shown to keep the host tree scaffold in good enough condition to prevent these bacterial infections, for the most part.

I meant to say N.C. not N.J. as the State 'guardian' roostock was selected from.
(IE: 2003 article

 Disease continues to defy complete control efforts: Hybrid almond rootstocks prey to canker in sandy soil
 )

This is the image from your blog too.
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click for larger image

Help. We have had an unusually snowy winter here in Southcoast Massachusetts. Our japanese cherry tree's bark is split down one side of the tree. The branches have buds on them, but we're concerned that there is something seriously wrong with the tree. Is there anything we can do to save the tree or will we have to discard it? p.s. we've had this tree for close to ten years.

I too have had this happen only the leaves have black spots and are turning yellow. Also hardened sap os evident.