Redditors weren't 100% sure what was going on with a homeowner's apple trees, but the consensus was that it wasn't good.
The poster shared photos of the trunks to the r/Gardening subreddit and asked for some guidance.
They explained: "Left on vacation for three weeks and came back to my apple trees trunks like this, should I be worried? What is this?"
The second photo shows some major girdling and signs of severe issues on the tree trunks with all the missing bark.
"Yeah you should be worried someone weedwacked them all lazy and girdled them," a user hypothesized.
Certainly that is a possibility because it does seem the bark is indiscriminately missing in the second photo. A different Redditor had a separate theory, though.
"Your tree seems to have apple canker," they guessed. "The damage shown well above the turf line means that this is some kind of tree disease and not damage caused by careless mowing."
As RHS notes, apple canker is a fungal disease affecting apple trees that can cause these sorts of impacts on tree bark. The original poster noted that the tree was 3 years old, so the suddenness of that sort of condition was of real concern.
"Is there any way of recovering or no?" they asked.
One poster clarified they weren't an arborist, and the diagnosis was just their opinion. They advised checking in with an expert.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 "The tree is pretty sick," they added. "If you want to save, check with a specialist."
Unfortunately, the OP noted that they lived in a small country, so finding a specialist was unrealistic. Beyond getting someone to house-sit or tree-sit in the future, they didn't have many avenues to protect what happened from recurring on a future trip.
One commenter did think there might be a lesson to learn for the next time.
"Not an expert, but possibly signs of it being planted too deep," they theorized.
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