Larch in trouble?

Hi folks,
I went away for a few days (my trees were well attended to while gone). One tree, a small larch, made a dramatic shift between last thursday and tuesday (today) and I am a bit worried, because it seems a month-ish early for the fall color to arrive in my area.

One disclaimer. The tips were brown for a month prior to this week, possibly because I pinched the new shoots rather than trimmed after the first flush. It is certainly possible (and likely) that I was too aggressive during that process.

Is my larch packing it in after a rough summer and looking forward to better luck next year? Is it blight? Any help from the Mirai community would be wonderful.
Sean





My guess is that it ended up a bit wet or dry while you were away and is reacting with an early needle change. Watch the watering and it will most likely come back in the spring. I have a cascade that got too warm a month ago and is looking better in a cooler spot. I have one in the ground that looks similar to yours, but the two beside it look great. Sometimes they just get fickle.

From what I can see in your pics, the terminal buds look OK, and that’s a good sign.

In the Southern UK larch are going over early due to the hot and dry weather that we’ve had this year.

Mine look way worse from the heat we had here a few weeks ago and I know they’ll be fine because of next year’s buds and the vascular growth. I wouldn’t worry about anything other than balance of that H2O :slight_smile: