A few months ago, during the winter season’s prime time for seasonal cold and snow, I decided to clean out the forest near my house.. Dead trees that succumbed to time over the years.. Branches hanging too low.. The vast amount of leave-less figures in the forest gave me the keen ability to be able to judge which trees were ripe for cutting down.. which ones were have seen their prime and then some.
And then some.
Then lots.
Within hours I realized that half of the little once-lush forest near my home was near dead.. Zombie trees were abounded with brittle bark and lifeless limbs.. A startling realization occurred: I was standing in the middle of something really bizarre and almost other-worldly.. While I was not paying attention to surroundings, it would appear as though all of the trees near me suddenly looked like their collective lives were about to end.
Fast forward to today.. a walk in a park … filled with dead and dying trees around. A relatively quaint early spring Sunday in March, with the lush vegetation of the future ready to grow, and all once can see is dead bark falling from trees as far as the eye can see…
Suddenly it’s clear: Our ash trees are dying.
Ash trees have been growing for generations…
Suddenly they are falling victims to prey not from these places..
The Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is a beetle that is native to northeastern Asia.
It was most likely brought into the US from cargo ships or airplanes carrying solid wood packing material from Asia around 2002..
As of August 2017, it was found in 31 states, as well as the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
And in case you have not noticed, the EAB is steadily killing hundreds of millions of ash trees across North America.
The tiny, cream-colored EAB larvae hatch from their eggs in mid-summer and chew through the rough outer bark to reach a layer of inner bark, called phloem. Phloem is the tissue used by trees to transport carbohydrates and other nutrients from the canopy down to the roots. The larvae feed in s-shaped tunnels, called galleries, for several weeks in summer and early fall. As the larvae grow, the galleries increase in size. Galleries often etch the outer ring of sapwood, which ash trees use to transport water up from the roots to the canopy. A few larvae feeding in a large branch or on the trunk of an ash tree have little effect on the tree. Over time, however, as the density of larvae builds, the ability of the tree to transport nutrients and water is disrupted by the galleries. The canopy begins to thin, and large branches may die. Eventually, the entire tree succumbs.
It has triggered quarantines to prevent the movement of infected trees, untreated ash tree firewood, chips larger than one inch, and nursery stock from areas where infestations have occurred.
What are the signs your neighborhood trees are infested?
Woodpecker activity and damage on live trees.. Bark splits. Exit holes.. Spots.. limbs falling down erratically.
Everything you are most likely seeing on trees around your abode..
The most recently information that COAL SPEAKER could adequately find and trust regarding the Ash tree problem: The bug is poised to kill just about all of the 308 million ash trees in our forests, parks and neighborhoods! In 2017, this horrible statistic was reported widely: The emerald ash borer is so devastating that it’s expected to kill nearly 100 percent of ash trees within four to five years!
Almost 100%……
Here closer to home in Pennsylvania, most reports indicate that the ash borer arrived from Michigan to the keystone state around 2012. Pennsylvania forests have become ravaged by the bug..
In the early 1900s, the eastern U.S. watched chestnut blight, an exotic pathogen, roll through, killing large and small trees and altering the hardwood forest forever from that point.
A few decades later, Dutch elm disease, an exotic pathogen carried by an exotic bark beetle, came through, killing majestic American elms along city streets and in forests.
The nightmare on elm streets…… Ash trees now stand. And a new nightmare is beginning. Scientists believe that the pest eventually will reach the entire ash tree range in North America, an area that covers parts of at least 42 U.S. states and six provinces in Canada.
X X X
Happy to have some grand ole oaks? ….The fact you’re house is nor adorned with Ash Trees may not save the landscape..
Sudden Oak Death has been also rapidly spreading in Pennsylvania forests.
Sudden Oak Death is caused by the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, the disease affects oaks and a wide variety of other plant species, including those in the Rhododendron and Viburnumgenera. If plants are found to be infected, they must be destroyed..
Have a hemlock?
The hemlock woolly adelgid, also from Asia. Each the size of a poppy seed, adelgids make fluffy, white egg sacs in which they wrap themselves and which attach to the undersides of hemlock branches. Safely stuck to the tree, the adelgid inserts a feeding tube and proceeds to suck the sap out of the tree like a vampire..
X X X
Forests come and go.. change remains the same.
If there is any lesson to be learned from professionals in the field — fields, literally– is that this happens. This is almost a natural course for forests.. A purge of sorts in nature.
What falls today … will be replaced with something that rises tomorrow.
A 2014 NEW YORK TIMES article summarized the blight and plight this way,
It’s important to note that a different ecosystem is not the same as no ecosystem. When ash trees and hemlocks die, they are replaced by other kinds of trees. Over time, a new environmental system takes root. Few people living today remember when the Northeast was covered in forests of American chestnut. That species all but died out more than half a century ago from a series of fungal infections. Today, the forests and the life they harbor are very different; in many cases, hemlocks replaced the chestnuts. And now something else will replace the hemlocks.
But we will still have lost something valuable, Dr. Liebhold said.
“The forests and the species that exist there, they’re part of America and what defines America,” he said. “Without being too corny, they’re a symbol of what this country is.”
A symbol of what the country is..
Or was.
