The flowering dogwood tree is a beautiful ornamental tree that offers a view of stunning white flowers, green leaves, and bright-colored red fruits that attract birds and other wildlife. The smaller stature of a dogwood makes the tree a great addition to yards of any size. But owning an ornamental tree also comes with some responsibilities, including monitoring the tree for signs of a potential tree disease.

Here are a few of the serious tree diseases that can strike a flowering dogwood tree – and how a tree care service or tree removal service, such as Robert Jefferies logging & Tree Service, can help.

Armillaria Root Rot

Armillaria root rot is a fungal tree disease that can kill the flowering dogwood. Early symptoms include general dieback symptoms such as premature browning and twigs dropping from the tree, but those symptoms are common of many tree diseases. The telltale symptom of root rot is yellow-brown bulbous mushrooms that form on the trunk near the ground.

It's vitally important to have a tree care service come and diagnose your tree as soon as there are signs of dieback. The dieback might be the sign of a different type of root rot that might be treatable or that the tree could fight off. But armillaria root rot is particularly aggressive and the tree will likely die. You will need to call in a tree removal service to take out the dogwood so that the disease doesn't spread to other trees or plantings.

Crown Canker

Crown canker is a tree disease that tends to enter an already damaged or unhealthy dogwood through points of stress or breakage. The disease will strike early enough in the growing season that leaves will appear smaller and lighter than normal and twigs will start to dry out and die off. The twig problems will often start on the side of the tree with the previous damage, but will spread throughout the tree as the disease advances. Canker-like sores will also appear in places near the original damage.

This is another non-treatable tree disease. Call in a tree removal service as soon as possible to remove the dogwood and avoid planting a similar tree in that area even after the soil is treated.

Dogwood Anthracnose Canker

This fungal tree disease also creates cankers on the bark of the dogwood and general leaf, flower, and twig dieback. But the anthracnose canker is a slower acting tree disease. A dogwood can survive this infection for a number of years. The survival of the tree depends on bringing in a tree care service to correctly diagnose the problem and to keep the surrounding soil and the tree as healthy as possible to help the tree fight off the disease.