I've posted earlier about my diseased cherry seedling.
Since then, all the leaves have wilted and curled to some amount and the trunk of the seedling itself looks like a dried stick.
Is this tree living its final days out? And if it is, is there anything I can do about it?
My location is Ontario in Canada.
I still stand by my initial statement given here:
I'm no tree, plant disease expert, but that to me looks like some kind of disease, not something brought on by over or under watering, especially as you say the spots were there before planting.
It came from a neighbour; the spots were there when I first planted it
Q. Have you tried contacting someone at Gardening Information Service via Royal Botanical Gardens Canada and/or Diagnostic Services via Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA)?
Today (2011-10-01) I heard back from the Royal Botanical Gardens Canada, if you wish to bring in or send in a plant sample for diagnosis you can do so via:
Please call us at: 905.527.1158 and ask for Natalie at ext: 238. She should be able to get you answers.
If no, it may well be worth your time to-do-so...
Seeing as it's such a young sapling and I believe infected with some kind of disease, I'd strongly be inclined to remove it from my landscape (bag it up and put it in the rubbish bin).
I would get myself a new sapling (start again), doing my best to ensure it was "healthy" ie It looked good, had no visible "unwanted" markings, etc.
Then instead of planting it directly in the ground, I would plant it in a decent sized pot filled with appropriate growing medium -- get it established, allow it to develop a good root system, before transplanting it out in bare ground.
There is no cause to throw this plant away. None.
As you noted in a previous question, it came into your garden with a leaf-spot problem which got much worse in the weeks following transplanting. Given that you transplanted at the end of the growing season, this is not unusual nor is it particularly worrisome.
Cherries grown from seed often have tap roots and so was likely a bit unhappy in a pot. Being transplanted late in the season, added to the plant's stress. Leaf spot diseases (both fungal and bacterial) are opportunistic. They primarily affect the older leaves of plants under stress. Given the date, all the leaves on your cherry qualify as older leaves. Hence the seriousness of this infection is not surprising.
Since the defoliation the leaf spot is causing is happening only a couple weeks before normal autumn leaf drop, it is doing the plant no harm. Really. Serious leaf spot infections are a big deal when they occur earlier in the season. They can affect the new growth, they can ruin the fruit, and, most importantly, if they defoliate the tree, the tree will be forced to push out a new set of leaves. This can seriously deplete the tree stored food supply. However, a leaf spot problem this late is just encouraging early dormancy — not a serious cause for concern.
The cherry's stem appears healthy. The bud at the tip looks fat and healthy. So I see no reason the plant will not do fine next spring. Leaf spot diseases generally do not winter over in the plant. Therefore, if you remove the leaves and dispose of them, the leaf spot problems may not reappear.
If you have a serious leaf spot problem next year, then, maybe, you will have a good reason to get rid of the the plant. Even then, I would look first at cultural issues that may make the plant more susceptible to problems. Is it in too much shade? Does the soil drain well? Does the air circulate well where it is growing? If this area is a bad place to grow a cherry seedling, it will not be much better for growing second year cherry stock from a nursery.
Fruit trees in general are notorious for not growing well from a seed. They often take long to establish, require longer to start fruiting and are easily prone to diseases/wilting before they can establish themselves. For these reasons (and others), almost always, they're propagated by grafting a scion from an established tree with desired qualities onto a hardier rootstock, which eventually fuses with the rest of the tree. The rootstock is chosen from trees that are very hardy to the local conditions.
I fully agree with Mike Perry and bstpierre in bagging it up and getting a 2 yr old tree from the nursery. But if you're determined to give it a shot, for starters, you could try a regular watering schedule and cut back on the amount of water (if you're over watering it). Perhaps, removing the worst affected leaves might help (don't leave it bare though... from the picture, removing the two worst ones should be a good start).
Another alternative is to transplant it to a pot (or start a new sapling in a pot, as Mike suggested). This is very critical for young saplings, especially in parts of the world like yours, where the winters can easily snuff the life out of it. There is no way that little scrawny thing is going to survive an Ontario winter. If you had these in pots, you could move it inside your garage or in the house and place it next to a window, where it would get adequate sunlight and protection from the cold. Once it establishes itself, you can move it back to the ground.
Cherrys do fine in pots and here in Southern California, quite a lot of folks have cherry trees in pots. The reason is that it never gets cold enough for the tree to produce fruit, so people load them up in trucks and drive an hour north to the mountain regions and drop it off at a friend's place for the winter. Come spring, they bring it back for a beautiful blossom display and plenty of fruits.
