Tough to say with the information given but if "recently transplanted" it could be that the plants did not recover from the stress of the transplant.

Photos of the ones you planted a year ago could offer some clues.

Thanks for your input. But I find it hard to believe that the trees would thrive for nearly a year (some doubling in size) and then suddenly be distressed from transplanting a year ago. Even the little seedling that I moved showed no signs of distress at the time of transplant and has looked extremely heathly in the past two months, now growing at the rate of an inch a day. And then just now the leaves on one of the branches are suddenly deformed! I wanted to send pix, but I don't know how to on this site. Can someone please tell me how.

I don't know the tree but usually a morphological change such as this one is due to environmental factors such as, a dramatic change in climate from the source.

Dax

I was referring to the ones you recently planted.
There are free photo hosting websites like where you can post the actual files then it will give you directions on how to share them with forums, usually by copying a string of gobelty guck into a message here.

need more facts ...

a 15 gal pot might have a 6 foot tree in it???

a 6 foot tree ... will need up to 3 years to become 'established' .. to be able to take the intense heat of AZ in high summer ..

all the growth could have been related to its life the year prior to your transplant ... we dont know ...

when did you plant them.. was that the proper planting time for AZ ...

how big were they..

what is your native soil .. did you bare root them.. did you plant a big wad of peat based media in native sand??

did you mulch...

what was your watering protocol ....

can you provide pics??

we need more hard facts ... other than the fact that they have deformed leaves... otherwise we can speculate forever.. and get nowhere ....

ken

Recent observation. All the Mesquite Saplings that I have still growing in pots do not get the Deformed Leaves. Until I transplant them into the soil in my yard. Perhaps caused from Something in the soil?

Perhaps from herbicide drift?

We really need pictures to know what "distortion" means. Some kinds are very distinctive.

Have photos on my hard drive. Wish I knew how to post them from there to here.

After contacting every possible source I could think of regarding the distorted leaves on my Mesquite Trees including a tree expert from the city and the top Master Gardener, I finally solved the mystery myself with internet research and an old microscope. APHIDS. The Master Gardeners came close with their diagnoses of Psyllids. But then informed me that the appropriate treatment was to do nothing. A year later all six trees are severely invested with aphids with hardly an ungnarled leaf on them and have all stopped growing.

They make a spray chemical for aphids. Just curious--- who in their right mind would purposely grow a mesquite tree!!! In south Texas one cannot kill them fast enough!!😊😊😊