I have an acer palmatum (not sure of the exact type but its red and comes from Nara) that has lived in London for c.5yrs. It has a healthy covering of moss and up and till recently has done very well with London tap water. I stop my weekly liquid fertiliser as usual around July.
However, recently it has started behaving very strangely..
In late August the larger leaves started to fade and wilt/ roll up. This is about a month or two earlier than usual. The vast majority of leaves were effected with older ones initially preferentially impacted. There didn't seem to be on obvious pattern to the distribution (ie an isolated branch) and now all the leaves are impacted. Initially, I thought I had under watered the tree but increasing the volume and frequency of daily didn't seem to help.
With great sadness I accepted that my tree was dying, perhaps from a root fungus of something..
A week of so later something bizarre happened, it rained (sadly not that bizarre for London) and as if by magic all the leaves unfurled and spread out their 5 points. The leaves appeared healthy again and stayed so for c.6hrs after the rain before returning to their previous rolled up appearance. Over the past month the same thing has happened every time it rains but not when I water the tree with Tap. In the past few weeks a few of the leaves started falling off but the majority remain attached and rolled up....until it rains again.
Does any one know what’s going on.. is it fungus…is it London's hard water.... is it the moss….is there anything I can do...
When have you last repotted this tree? It sounds like the tree is not getting any water when you water. Either you water too little, or the pot is full of roots and they do not get water.
I was about to write just that. We have had very little rain for weeks, only now has it started to rain, so I have been watering every day until a few days ago.
The leaves you show look dead to me. The black roots are dead too. Repotting now is tricky. Do you keep your trees in places that are frost-free for winter?
Were it mine, I would repot, removing all the dead roots, and cleanup of the rootball as you normally would during repot, then keep frost free for the next 6 weeks, ideally letting the tree capture fall sun as much as possible to aid the roots. But common recommendation would be to wait til spring.
Same thing happen on all dead leafs on the ground. When they are dry they curl up and when it rains on them they uncurl. It has to do with water getting on the leafs and not water in the soil. But it does not mean the tree likes it, the leafs are still dead and do not contribute to the tree health whatsoever.
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