The grand rows of mature sycamores that thread among vintage English cottages and Tudor homes of Yalecrest help define the east-side neighborhood’s historic character.
Some of those green elders are getting sick these days.
Recognizable for their distinct mottled bark, sycamores arching over blocks of Salt Lake City’s Michigan and Hubbard avenues are slammed with a debilitating fungal pathogen called anthracnose. City arborists have also identified the foliar fungus infesting older American sycamores and lesser-known London Plane trees growing in Liberty Park, the Avenues and parts of Sugar House.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tree canopies on 1700 East near Michigan Avenue in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, June 22, 2022. A Salt Lake City Council member is seeking funding in the upcoming budget to treat the sick trees.
Their infected leaves form brown papery lesions, then wilt, curl and fall. Twigs die back. Cankers can spread on their branches and trunks. At least one of the many sycamores along South Temple is showing signs of “witch’s broom,” where dense clusters of twigs grow from a single node.
Could the infestation end up killing some of the city’s most venerable trees? Probably not by itself.
But Urban Forestry Division Director Tony Gliot says the fungus can conspire with other pests — powdery mildew and a tiny sap-sucking bug called sycamore scale — to severely weaken older sycamores and make them more vulnerable to other trying conditions, such as drought and summer heat extremes.
In fact, Gliot said, anthracnose is common at some level among most of the roughly 4,600 sycamores that are known to grow along streets and in parks and natural areas as part of the city’s urban forest of 90,000-plus trees and 250 species.
The fungus is especially evident, he said, with recent weather cycles of wetter, cooler winters and springs on the Wasatch Front, which have helped its spores spread.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Yalecrest-Laird Heights Local Historic District in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, May 22, 2024.
Sycamores can live a few hundred years, and some of the city’s oldest are approaching a century in age. It’s some of those trees, said Gliot, and others already struggling to get enough sunlight or water “where we find these conditions to be worst right now.”
“What we want to see is full green leaf canopies without brown or yellow lesions, and especially without leaf drop,” the city forester said. “These past two years, we’ve seen leaf drop.”
‘Your trees are sick’
Many Yalecrest homeowners with city-owned sycamores on their parking strips are worried enough that they’ve formed a “Save Our Sycamores” group and recently sent up warning flares at City Hall.
“It’s quite sad to see them in such terrible condition,” said Yalecrest resident Sara Malik, who noted how neighbors decorate the sycamore boughs with Christmas lights each season.
“They’re a huge part of the community,” Malik said. “The whole neighborhood cares deeply about the trees.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The giant sycamore trees of Michigan Avenue at 1900 East in Salt Lake City draw crowds on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024.
Last year, Malik said, the fungal affliction on sycamores by her home “was particularly bad.”
“The trees were not as full,” she said. “Some of the leaves were starting to come down earlier in summer.”
Longtime Michigan Avenue homeowner Byron Little said the sycamores near him have looked unhealthy for three or four years.
“Then this past year, they have been horrible,” Little said. “In fact, my kids came from out of state and the first thing they said was, “Dad, your trees are sick.’ "
Wider neighborhood concern has prompted Dan Dugan, City Council member for District 6, which spans Yalecrest, to urge council colleagues to OK an additional $150,000 in this year’s budget to pay for chemical treatments on the sycamores in hopes of knocking down the anthracnose.
(Yalecrest Neighborhood Council) Signs of the effects of anthracnose, a fungal infestation affecting sycamore trees in some Salt Lake City neighborhoods including Yalecrest, Liberty Park, the Avenues and portions of Sugar House.
“We might not realize it but for our neighborhoods and communities, trees give us so much,” Dugan said. ”Aside from our people, the urban canopy is probably one of our most precious capital resources we have.”
Shade. Buffering from heat extremes. Improved air quality. Slowing gushes of stormwater runoff. Habitat for wildlife.
“A century-old tree,” said Dugan, “takes 100 years to get there. You can’t just buy a new one.”
More watering helps, but sycamores are tough
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sycamore trees line Michigan Avenue between 1800 East and 2000 East on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025.
The added cash, if approved, will pay for test treatments this spring and again in the fall, said Gliot.
Crews with the city’s Urban Forestry Division plan to use fungicides and insecticides with various application techniques, he said, “to see what is most effective in addressing the conditions that we’re seeing right now.”
“We have not done any large-scale treatments like this in many, many years,” he said. Chemicals will be injected into the trunks or infused into soils as part of these tests, Gliot noted, as opposed to spraying trees in residential areas.
City officials say the best thing residents can do to aid infected sycamores is rake up and remove dead leaves, prune away cankers and dead limbs — and give them lots of water. That’ll mean a good soak, too, equivalent to about 5 to 10 gallons per inch of trunk diameter, two to three days a week.
Meanwhile, there’s some good news here as well, stemming from the hardy sycamores themselves.
“Trees are some of the most resilient organisms on the whole planet, and that’s why they’re so long-lived and why they get so big,” Gliot said. “They’re inherently good at adapting and tolerating these types of changes.”
