Nope :-) And I am a certified consulting horticulturist and stay pretty in tune with whatever new plant diseases and insect pests that seem to be making inroads.......knowing these things is part of my job. Do you have any more specific info to offer on what this "plague" may be?

Not a clue, just that it's supposedly something that's threatening to move into this area (central Indiana) from elsewhere. (It may not have reached the PNW either.) We're currently losing our ash trees to the emerald borer, and of course our elms and chestnuts are long gone. It'd be a real blow to lose our maples too. But this may be a false alarm. (fingers crossed!)

up here in n. maine we are seeing dieoffs of maples mostly but some other deciduous trees also from pollution. some times its just the tops other times it kills the whole tree. comes from coal fired electric plants in pennsylvania and southern canada that blow over maine. also the cause of acid rain. has been getting better as tighter pollution laws have cut down on emissions but still see it on older maples at higher elevations.

Winter moths devastating maples, blossoming trees

Perhaps he's thinking of winter moths?

Gardengal, I was up near Index a couple of days ago and noticed the Acer marcrophyllums looking pretty bad. The edges of the leaves were brown, even down by the streams. A local said that, "someone who was called out called it Maple Rust". The leaves did not look like Tar Spot nor normal Fall browning.

Mike

"Maple rust" - that's a new one on me!! Never heard of such a disease and there is no literature, current or otherwise, to support its existence. I'd have to wonder about the qualifications of the 'someone who was called out' and how they determined this was the problem :-) FWIW, maples can suffer from a range of fungal leaf issues, loosely grouped together under the heading of "anthracnose". However, theses are seldom, if ever, severe enough to cause the death of the tree, although consistent defoliation during the growing season can certainly weaken it, leaving it open to other pathogens or insect damage.

About the only thing I can think of that would be considered a "plague" and serious enough to cause tree death would be one or more root rots that can affect maples. But these tend to be very situation-specific rather than widespread. And they are not at all new - most have been around forever and affect other species as well as maples.

I've never heard of Maple Rust either. That's why I put the statement in quotes. The man I talked to was quoting one of his neighbors that said some one was called out. I, and he, assumed it was somebody from the county or state. It gets fuzzy real quick. :-)

our maples look like that. looks like they've been hit with round up! its the sulfuric acid formed in the rain clouds from coal fired plants. burns the leaves esp. at the top third of the higher trees. our foresters determined that maples are more vulnerable to this than most other trees. al least thats what they determined was happening in maine. other new england states had similar problems. i think there was some literature written on it . ill see if i can dig it up.

There are quite a few species of maple that are very tolerant of urban pollution, including acid rain, so would be surprised if this was the situation uniformly applied to the entire genus.

It is also important to understand that leaf damage and disfigurement from whatever source is highly unlikely to cause tree death. I've even seen our native bigleaf maples ravaged by brush fires, to the point where there are no leaves remaining, yet they still manage to survive and come back in following seasons.

Thanks, guys. Sounds like my brother may have been fed an exaggeration.

Big-leaf maples are dropping like flies in western WA, I counted a dozen recently dead ones on one part of my girlfriend's Camano Island property earlier this year - and I stopped before counting all of them.

Now when you drive onto the Island from Stanwood there are failing maples visible all along the eastern edge of it, like brown clouds among the conifers.

First the leaf size shrinks, then they die. Often it is only a few seasons - perhaps sometimes less - between normal looking and dead or nearly so.

Quite a few years ago roots of affected big-leaf maples in the Seattle arboretum were sampled and the samples placed on agar. Multiple different pathogenic water molds were identified as being present using this method, including species of Phytophthora and Pithium.

It has also been some time since Seattle tree expert Arthur Lee Jacobson predicted that Norway maple was going to replace big-leaf maple in local green belts.

Other than that there is a phenomenon back East occurring that has been called Sugar Maple Decline. Perhaps this is what the OP was about.

Around here there is also quite a bit of blighting off of Japanese maple cultivars going on - I had a purple one I planted on Camano start shriveling and slip away rather soon after planting. One participant with past nursery industry involvement claimed on another gardening forum site that such post-planting failures with grafted Japanese maples were due to internal bacterial blight infestations picked up at propagation nurseries with inadequate sanitation.

Maybe you should make a visit to the western side of the Sound. They sure aren't dropping like flies around here! More like popping up like weeds - I have countless seedlings on my property and they are extremely prevalent everywhere around here and for the most part, perfectly healthy. Some do show some late season drought stress in some areas and some very mature older specimens can develop various interior rots that cause them to lose limbs or even large sections in winter storms. But none that I have seen that are obviously dead. Lots of madrona carcasses and the odd native conifer here and there with laminated root rot but no dead bigleaf maples. And this includes the area from Port Townsend south to Gig Harbor and over to the Canal, where most of my work travels take me.

>Maybe you should make a visit to the western side of the Sound. They sure aren't dropping like flies around here!<

beginning in 2010, bigleaf maple decline (BLMD) has been reported in
both Western Oregon and Washington. Symptoms of this decline include
deformed, wilted, and shrunken leaves; partial to entire crown dieback;
and complete tree mortality. In 2014-2015, the Washington State
Department of Natural Resources surveyed 63 sites scattered throughout
Western Washington at which BLMD was observed to ascertain a causative
agent for the decline. In collaboration with colleagues from Oregon
State University and Washington State University-Puyallup, bioassays
from leaf, branch, soil, root and decayed wood samples of symptomatic,
dying or dead trees were collected in Washington State; however, to
date, all samples have tested negative for many of the usual pathogen
suspects that are often associated with the general symptoms of BLMD
(e.g., Verticillium spp., Armillaria root rot., and Ganoderma root rot).
Another important observation from these field observations is that
both young and mature bigleaf maple trees appear to be susceptible to
BLMD

http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1009492-bigleaf-maple-decline-in-western-washington.html

those sound like the symptoms we have up here in our red and sugar maples. could be a combination of pollution/climate change stressing these trees then disease and insects take over. i can take you in the woods up here and point out a doz. trees like this in 15 min. of looking. doesn't always kill but the dieback can be most of the crown. more so in higher elevations.

Despite whatever has been written by the DNR, there is no significant evidence of any decline in my area. I am out in the field on a daily basis, mostly with quite heavily wooded properties, and if there were these populations of dead or diseased trees all over, they would be readily apparent. They are not.

First thing I notice is the shrunken leaves, earlier in the year anyway trees may look more or less normal otherwise. I pointed this marked leaf size reduction out to a friend with two maples he plans to build a swing between and he hadn't noticed.

He's "in the business" also. In fact this past year he designed and installed a wall and plantings etc. on a Seattle site where there was a big-leaf maple present that the City deemed significant, made sure was retained. I wonder what state of health it is in.

Volunteers are pulling Norway maples out of a wooded Seattle park because the seeming millions of these that pop up there keep growing, resulting in thickets of saplings. Whereas the annual carpet of big-leaf maple seedlings mostly vanishes. As appears to be usual on most other sites.

might be something totally different as the types of maples and where they grow are different. could be micro climate specific or even regional in the same growing zones. it seems to affect the northern parts of new england more than the south. maybe its the same in your area? I've heard of pollution from china killing redwoods in c.a. maybe it depends where the jet stream brings the pollution?

>I've heard of pollution from china killing redwoods in c.a. maybe it depends where the jet stream brings the pollution?<

I remember something about this but have retained nothing specific - except the opposite situation that coast redwoods alive today and being studied now are growing like never before, with the supposition being that it's the increased carbon dioxide.

Thanks for the tip about Maple Decline. I just read a few articles online, and it sounds like mostly a matter of poor management (road salt, soil compaction, etc). I've seen the same symptoms on a couple of trees in my family's yards.

One was an adolescent sugar maple that was growing where my brother wanted to build his house. He and a few burly friends moved it, and it settled in and grew, but about the time it had doubled in size, it started coloring up early, and within a few years it was dead.

The other is a sugar maple that's been in front of my mother's house for maybe thirty years. The past few years I've been noticing dead branches on one side and early coloring in the same area. This summer I happened to notice that the trunk on that side descends directly into the ground, while the other side has a normal root flare. I strongly suspect that Mom didn't spread the roots properly when she planted the tree, and the unhealthy side is now being strangled by one of its own roots. Don't suppose there's any help for it now, short of a time machine.

Perhaps the "epidemic" is actually an increase in a number of maple-unfriendly cultural practices and chemical use in general.