• Diagnostic Review Report

Under the Scope Feature

Winter Injury to Woody Ornamentals

January-February 2014

The Plant Disease Diagnostic Clinic provides a long list of fact sheets on various plant diseases and additional fact sheets on various abiotic issues including a fact sheet on the types of winter damage commonly occurring on woody ornamental plants in the Northeastern U.S. Now is a good time to take note of conditions that may cause winter injury to woody ornamentals. While failure of a limb or branch under the weight of heavy wet snow or ice may be so obvious it may not require diagnostic services to determine what is wrong, there are other types of damage that may occur during the winter months that may not be immediately apparent. Our fact sheet covers several types of winter injury that may occur to a wide variety of woody plants. Please see our on-line fact sheet at: http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factsheets/winterinjury.pdf.  

A heavy snowfall that occurred in mid-April covered flowers of a Cornelian Cherry that began to bloom following a warm spell. These trees were able to tolerate this exposure, buy many other plants at this stage may be severely damaged under similar conditions.

Another type of injury that may occur to woody ornamentals during or after a hard winter. This tree was so severely injured, it was eventually removed.