A young friend who work PT at HD hooked me up with a HD manager who gave me three free 4WG trees, all with infestation. The three trees were the only ones on the pallet that look sickly (upon close inspection), and oddly, they were all Gold Nugget trees.

Along the branches of the young trees, I see lots of little lumps/bulges/swollen areas at or near the leaf nodes, Curious, I cut thorough a lump and I see black jelly-like stuff inside and/or near the area. In other parts of the branches, the middle part of the wood is sometimes rotten-like light brown, sometimes grayish-black.

I know it is infestation of some sort, and since this is my first encounter with this sort of thing,

#1) what the hell is it?

I started off pruning and trashing all the infested branches, then gave up because there were just too many of them. Then I decided to cut down the trunk towards the graft line (yes, starting over). Lots of healthy uninfected wood were cut off too - just to be safe, and because I was paranoid.

I save myself a short stump above the graft line, knowing that new buds will form around the base of the shoots that were cut off.

#2) Was it okay to do this, or should I have trashed the whole tree???

Roots, rootstocks, and graft unions look fine though...

*the brown marks you see on the cuts are just burnt marks. I sometimes like to prune with my dremel tool with a spinning disk (makes a clean cut and cauterize the wound at the same time). I don't know why I do it, I just do it...