It has multiple trunks and all the leafs on one of the trunks have turned brown and stayed on the tree.

Now I'm seeing another trunk starting to show some of the same symptoms.

I have no idea what could be wrong

Location?

Too much water?

How's the drainage?

Did your neighbor behind you spray anything recently?

no help here but i have some planted in McMullen Co and the leaves get ate up as quick as they grow.

We just lost one that looked just like that last summer. I tried everything. We are in Fort Bend County

ought1ag said:

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no help here but i have some planted in McMullen Co and the leaves get ate up as quick as they grow.

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I'm not far from you . After every rain, I get what looks like webworms in mine, and they eat the heck out of it. I now usually wait a few days after each rain then spray it with Liquid Seven you put on your garden hose. Works pretty well.

I'm in San Antonio.

Unless maybe one of my irrigation system pipes have a crack and is keeping the ground wet there, all it gets is 1" of water once a week from the sprinkler system and then whatever rain we get. I don't water it at all outside of that.

I've got webworms under control.

I wondered if maybe the neighbor sprayed something, but the damage is all isolated to that one trunk. If a spray drifted over, I don't think it would be able to only affect the one trunk perfectly like that.

Really bummed

They like dry alkaline well drained soils and don't like to be disturbed. They don't like to be overwatered.

MouthBQ98 said:

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They like dry alkaline well drained soils and don't like to be disturbed. They don't like to be overwatered.

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I think my soil should be fitting as the grow wild all around here.

Hmm. The thing I read says to water them every two weeks.

I planted ours in the backyard here in San Antonio about 5-6 years ago. Aside from a few waterings to get it established, it hasn't received supplemental water. It's flourishing.

Is it just me or does an inch of water a week sound like a lot? That's 52 inches a year, more than Houston. Add in natural rain and it's even more.

I'm going with to much water. This tree is a tough sob. Put it in the ground and get it started. After that almost no care for it. Besides webworms that seem to love them.

Needs more mountain

I would trim off the dead areas and get some medina liquid fertilizer. Dilute it and hand spray it on. That way you get fertilizer to the tree without watering it.

FarmerJohn said:

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Is it just me or does an inch of water a week sound like a lot? That's 52 inches a year, more than Houston. Add in natural rain and it's even more.

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That's just through the summer. I basically turn the sprinkler system off all through the winter. Only run it for like 10 minutes per zone in the winter to keep heads popping up properly.

All I use is Medina organic fertilizer on everything.

I'm going with too much water as well. I'm in NB and mine is far enough away from the sprinkler system that it doesn't get much water at all and is in 100% sun all day. Also have the same problems with webworms and have to spray every so often.

I've seen piles of dead Mt. Laurels due to overwatering & it always starts like this.
Those who said too much water are correct. Adjust your irrigation to not throw any water near your Mt. Laurel. Get that mulch that's piled up on the trunks raked back so no mulch is on the trunk.

Root rot. IMHO the damage is done and can't be reversed . We had one about that size that got the same way. It may be from over watering or it may be from a fungus or nematodes. We rarely watered it and I mean almost never. I finally cut it back to the ground and it has tried several times to come back out but the foliage has died out each time. If it is a ground borne disease and you remove laurel I wouldn't replace it with another laurel.