Crown Gall or Tree Warts

This one is easy, it's called Crown Gall. There isn't a prayer for this tree but to pull it down and kill it.  You cannot plant anything there either as the fungus lives after the tree is gone which is why many advocate burning.  I had a tree like this once and we cut it down below the gall, we couldn't pull it out no matter how we tried.  Guess what?  The crab apple after a long time came back, flowered and bloomed.  We were lucky as it was not at the root, but like the one shown.

from Dr Thaddeus of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society...again...  WARTS OR EXCRESCENCES ON PLUM TREES. These have been attributed by many persons to the punctures or to the presence of insects therein. I have not been able to find either the one or the other in the incipient warts, or in their immediate vicinity. It was only when these excrescences were well grown and were approaching to maturity, that insects were discovered in them, and not always even in this stage,

 Some of the twigs, containing incipient warts, were enclosed in a tight vessel in May, and were examined in August, when they were entirely free from the vestiges of insects, although the tumors when cut open, presented the porous and cancellated structure peculiar to them when dry. The insects to be found in the warts in the course of the summer are of sundry kinds; such as the grubs of the plum-weevil, borers similar to those that attack peach and cherry trees, and the worm-like caterpillars of minute moths.

The last seem to be the most abundant and the most common. Their presence is made known by the castings of grainlike fragments thrown out of their burrows upon the surface of the warts. These tumors also afford nourishment to certain vegetable parasites, the little black grains, half immersed in the surface, to which, when mature they give a deep black color. These little grains are fungi, which have been described under the name of Sphceria morbosa.

 But neither to them, nor to the various insects before named, is the origin of the wants to be ascribed. The incipient warts can be detected, before the outer bark is ruptured, by the swollen appearance and spongy feeling of the surface. They seem to be the result of diseased action in the inner bark and new wood, while these parts are in a state of rapid formation.

 Upon examination, the cells of the tissues are found to bo surcharged with fluid, and distorted in shape and arrangement. The plum tree has been called a gross feeder. It may imbibe fluids by its roots faster than it can exhale the superfluous moisture from its leaves; or the function of the latter may be checked by sudden changes in the hygrometric state of the atmosphere as are common in the spring.

In either case, there would be likely to ensue an accumulation of fluid in the branches, and particularly in the tender tissues of the new wood, where warts are most commonly developed. From experiments made upon my own trees

 I have reason to believe that the growth of these tnmors may, in great measure, be prevented by severe root-pruning, stimulating the bark in the spring, or before the buds expand, by washing it with soft soap, and by cutting off the warts as soon as formed, and applying salt or brine to the wounds.