Quote from Lee Garden Ninja on 4th March 2023, 6:13 pm

Hi @mazza

Many thanks for your question.

Unfortunately, Google is right. These orange balls or pustules on your shrub are Coral spot. Also known as Nectria cinnabarina which causes cankers on broadleaf shrubs and trees resulting in blisters on infected plants.

What is coral spot?

Coral spot is a fungal disease of woody plants, trees and shrubs causing branches to die back. Small coral-pink or orange raised spots (pustules) form after the branch dies which then go to infect other plants.

The presence of Coral spot usually is an indicator that the plant was already weakened, such as poorly pruned, damaged or after a very wet winter with exposure.

It tends to impact broadleaf trees and shrubs like Acers, Carpinus, Aesculus (Horse Chesnut), Fagus and Tilia (Lime) to name a few.

How does Coral spot start and spread?

Coral spot is usually a windborne fungus. It gets into weakened or damaged plants via two methods.

1. Attacking young shrubs or trees through the bark after a fresh tissue is damaged in frost
2. Through lenticels (pores) in living bark of stressed or damaged trees.

Can coral spot be cured?

No sadly not. The only way to treat coral spot is to cut out with sharp secateurs all the infected branches from an infected shrub. Then burn them. Do not compost them, as they will lay dormant and then potentially infect the rest of your garden if the compost is spread and used. Burning is the only effective treatment for destroying Coral spot.

In your case, if it's badly infected then I'd dig up and burn or dispose of the remains in a rubbish bin or green waste bin. If you can prune it out make sure you disinfect your cutting equipment before and after. To be honest its not worth the risk. I'd dig up and burn. Cleaning your spade and fork afterwards.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Quote from Mazza on 5th March 2023, 6:38 pm

Thanks, Lee, for confirming what it is.

I cut the branches that had the coral spot on (that I could see). I really it'll save it. There were some other branches that look dead (no new buds growing on them) but I didn't remove them all. Should I?

Thanks!

Quote from TheGardener09 on 18th April 2023, 9:14 pm

Quote from Mazza on 4th March 2023, 4:47 pm

Hello,

I've noticed some small orange balls (see photo) on our tree in front of our house (sorry, I don't know the name of the tree!). It looks like not much is regrowing on the branches with theses balls.

When I googled it, it says it might be a nasty fungi but I'm not 100% sure. 

Can you tell by looking at the photos?

What can I do to help the tree?

Thank you,

Marion

Hello! Although I don't have much idea what kind of problem it is (although I see that they gave you a pretty good answer) I can recommend that you use the PlantNet application to recognize plants.

You must install it on your smartphone and it is enough to take a photo for it to tell you what plant it is. You can select to do the recognition through the leaves, flowers, stems or bark of the plant. At least it has always worked very well for me. I hope it helps you.

Greetings.