Fragments From Floyd

Now: Sudden Oak Death in Eastern Forests?

I concluded a recent post about the disappearing trees of the Appalachian Forest with the following imagined narrative:

"...And fifty years from now, neighbors may meet under the walnut by the barn and exchange pleasantries on a warm March day, remembering those who have lived here in the long-ago. There was that fella who wrote all about this place way back. Took pictures. Remember? And isn't it a shame what's happening to the oak trees here 'bouts?"

Yes, it would be unimaginably terrible for disease to ravage our oaks (the dominant forest species pretty much throughout the Eastern Deciduous Forest) the way that the Chestnut Blight took out that species early in the last century.

Well, this might not be so far-fetched a disaster as I would have hoped when I put those words in the mouths of local characters fifty years from now. Sudden Oak Death may already have come east. (Thanks to Jim Fletcher of Smoky Mt Journal for the bad news).

"Cross your fingers — it's not just Pennsylvania. We're hearing reports of other states finding positives as well," said Everett Hansen, a professor of plant pathology at Oregon State University. "A lot of nursery stock moved, and a lot of people are going to be holding their breath until this plays out.

The worst that could happen would be that, over a period of some years, you'd see a loss of susceptible trees from a significant section of the Eastern forest. There's many, many assumptions here, and we just don't know, but there's a lot of people are very, very concerned about what might happen in the East.

Sudden Oak Death, or Phytophthora ramorum, was first detected in North America in 1995, and has since been found in the wild in California and Oregon, and in nurseries in Washington and British Columbia."

"...In the wintertime in the Northeast it's going to be too cold for the Phytophthora, and that may mean that Northeastern forests are protected even if it gets established in other parts of the East. It might be too hot in the Southeastern forests," Everett said. "We just don't have a clear enough understanding of what the temperature and moisture requirements are and how they might play out in the East." from PennLive.com