Young allegheny serviceberry slowly dying

[whitenack]

Hi all,

Planted an allegheny serviceberry a few years ago and it did well the first year but ever since it has been dying slowly. Each year I have had to remove main structural branches that have died. This year, it looks like the central leader will be dead by summer. It has vigorous suckers from the roots that I have to constantly trim back, and has started putting out some small branches closer towards the ground. It has also developed lichens. Not sure if it is salvageable or if I should just go ahead and pull it out and replace it.

 

[pdqdl]

First, give us pictures of all sides of the tree, and some that have the whole tree. Just one little chunk of trunk isn't enough to go on.

Secondly, you might consider letting the suckers grow. If your trunk is permanently damaged from <unknown causes>, you can probably grow a nice tree from just one sucker, properly pruned.
I've done that quite a few times. They tend to grow very fast.

The process is rather simple. Let all the suckers grow, cut off the main trunk, then eliminate all but the strongest and fastest growing sucker. You'll probably have a healthy new sapling faster than re-planting.

Now if you have undiagnosed problems that killed the first tree, the sucker might still be aflicted by the conditions that haven't changed. In my experience, however, a tree that is strongly growing suckers is fairly healthy below ground, and quite ill above ground.