Plant & Weed ID Megathread

I have a small clump of it and it has remained a small clump.

In my garden, there's 2 pear trees, which each year, give a good crop of fruit. They're not very sweet TBH, but the lady next door collects them and makes some kind of jam or sweet with them.( lots of sugar needed, I imagine) On one tree, the most fruitful one, there's a branch coming out from the main tree down at the base, and it never gives any fruit at all. Meanwhile, the main body of the tree is showing masses of flower heads. But now, a few days ago, I noticed that the non fruit bearing branch was showing black/ rust colored spots, and it appears to be dying. And today. I see that it has spread to the main body of the plant. Any info would be appreciated. ( BTW, the ash trees that I had have all started to suffer from ash dieback, could this affect the pear trees too? )

Thanks for your advice !!!

I had completely forgotten about chewing the stems of it!!

Here are some pics of the affected tree, its sister tree, 20 ft away is already showing multiple fruit buds, but nothing on this one, What ever it is, it has progressed very rapidly. Two weeks ago, it appeared OK, then the Graft ( or what ever it is ) showed signs of dying with the black spot, now within the last few days the spot has appeared and it looks to be dying too. And while there were plenty of flowers on it, none of them have developed into fruit buds.

Thanks again for your help and Best Regards, Jim.

Yes, seems to fit all the symptoms all right!! Remove it I guess, and hope that Pear tree Nr 2 will not be affected, so I will be keeping a close eye on it, and any black spotted leaves will be promptly removed. Pity though, it was one of the star performers in the garden!!!🙂

If it is phytophthera its soil born and will affect anything you plant in the soil. I've seen it attack a hedge at one end and over the years work down through it and kill the whole hedge. In the garden I used to work in it took hold of one area and after killing almost everything (primarily rhododendrons and azaleas) very little that would thrive afterwards. Best bet it to only plant plants with some resistance.

RHS has a good list https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/pdfs/phytophthora-host-list.pdf

I wouldn't be so drastic just yet.

It looks more like a severe case of leaf spot to me. Btw the branch you cut off was a sucker from the rootstock which is why it never grew the same as the tree, remove as much of it as possible.

Agreed there's a couple of issues, something caused the sucker to die off, just not convinced it's phytopthora as Pyrus is rarely affected as per your rhs list. Could have been anything else including water collecting in the join between the two trunks. The sucker is no loss anyway.

I would spray off the grass growing around the trunk and give a good feed of fertilizer and see what happens.

Theres a large bush in my garden, I'll get a pic when I get to the laptop but I'm 99% sure it's this:

I just wanted to ask is it any good to our native wildlife or is it more of an ornamental plant (or invasive)

I'm trying to bring a large suburban garden under control but also turn it into a bird/pollinator/native friendly zone and I'm wondering if I should rip this out and replace with something better but I won't if its any use to the birds/insects/other life. It is very large, tall and wide.

That Fuchsia will also take hard pruning if its getting to big. Late winter (end Feb) is best time to do it. You can take it within 6 inches of the ground if you want to.

They are bulb seeds of some sort, probably lilies or maybe Calla lilies - what was in flower there?

They are in amongst daffodils which I always end up cutting back before the above get to flower. They always end up as casualties so I haven’t actually seen them flower