Diagnose: Pear Tree Fire Blight

1. Dead leaves still firmly attached, on a shoot tip bent into a hook
2. Those two signs together are close to conclusive. Almost nothing else kills leaves and leaves them clinging to the branch, and the hook forms because the shoot tip is still soft when the tissue behind it dies. Frost is the lookalike people reach for first. Frost blackens every flower at one height on one night and then stops, while a bacterial strike keeps traveling down the spur and into the wood over the following days. Blackening that rubs off between finger and thumb is not this. That is sooty mold growing on insect honeydew, and the tissue underneath is still green. If the leaves are spotted and falling rather than dead and hanging, look at leaf spot diseases instead. Blight kills tissue in a continuous run from the tip backward rather than in separate spots. Blossoms that opened normally and then simply dropped without ever blackening are a different question again, and pear tree poor fruit set covers that one.

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