Hi All, new to the forum. I am located in US- NJ. I have had 2 japanese maples die on me in one location. The first one was a bloodgood Japanese maple which lasted about 2.5 seasons before the leaves dried up and the bark started peeling off. We pulled that tree out and bought a Coral Bark Japanese maple. I did a lot of research on planting this time just in case I screwed something up last time. This tree was planted in May of 2018. We watered the tree every day- either with the hose or with a soaker hose on a timer. Never gave the tree any fertilizer as I was told it wouldn't need it. It looked pretty good last year. We wrapped it up for the winter, using burlap going about 3/4 of the way up the trunk. We used posts for the burlap giving the tree room to breathe (about a 6" diameter from the tree trunk to the burlap). We unwrapped the tree this year after the cold weather was over and it didn't look good, but not too bad yet. As the weeks went on it just got worse. Leaves shriveling up, the beautiful coral colored bark turning brown. And we had a very mild spring here. Right around the middle of May we realized that it seemed that the tree was dying and I called an aoborist to come out and take a look. He said we did everything right (planting, watering, winterizing) and that the spot these 2 trees were planted in may have fungus (Verticillium Wilt) in the soil and could be the cause of the trees dying.

I removed the tree today and took a number of pictures, one odd thing that I noticed was that there are a good number of strange white soft "roots", for lack of a better word, growing out of the root ball, you can see them in the pictures..

I am hoping that someone can provide me with some insight, as to whether or not I'd be crazy to plant another Japanese maple in this same location... we just want a Japanese Maple tree in our front yard!!!

Just as a backgroud these trees are planted in the front of our house facing the south so they are in the sun all day long.

Please see pictures and let me know if you need additional info, thanks!

[img]https://i.ibb.co/D7KNQZm/20190705-123001.jpg[/img]

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[img]https://i.ibb.co/wBRjHYh/20190705-123026.jpg[/img]