Ash dieback fungus found in UK
- Thread starter Andy BB
- Start date
Worrying and a miserable thing to happen.
How do we recognise it though?
My Rowan tree went through a hard time a few years ago. I honestly thought it was dying. It lost all it's leaves, the bark cracked and peeled off on the main trunks and the side shoots withered.
Cutting down Rowan is a supersititious No-No in many parts of the country
you just don't do it, y'know ?
Anyway; no one could give me a reason why the tree seemed to die. Jokes like, "Chronic Witch" apart, no one offered any useful suggestions.
So, I 'pruned' it hard back. Cut down the stems and wrapped honeysuckle and an eglantine around the remains.
Next Spring the Rowan's roots sent up suckers. Wee thin weedy looking things, but they were green leafed. It has grown very slowly since then, but it is alive and it had flourish and berries this year too
Two other Rowan trees in the street, both older than mine, and kept to single trunks, did not do so well. Both did as mine with leaves and bark, and both stood dead for two years. Wind took down one of them, and the council came and shredded it, the other's still standing like an arborial skeleton.
Is this the die-back ? How do we find out ? If it is, then it's been here for years and we just didn't know.
M
How do we recognise it though?
My Rowan tree went through a hard time a few years ago. I honestly thought it was dying. It lost all it's leaves, the bark cracked and peeled off on the main trunks and the side shoots withered.
Cutting down Rowan is a supersititious No-No in many parts of the country
you just don't do it, y'know ?Anyway; no one could give me a reason why the tree seemed to die. Jokes like, "Chronic Witch"
apart, no one offered any useful suggestions.So, I 'pruned' it hard back. Cut down the stems and wrapped honeysuckle and an eglantine around the remains.
Next Spring the Rowan's roots sent up suckers. Wee thin weedy looking things, but they were green leafed. It has grown very slowly since then, but it is alive and it had flourish and berries this year too
Two other Rowan trees in the street, both older than mine, and kept to single trunks, did not do so well. Both did as mine with leaves and bark, and both stood dead for two years. Wind took down one of them, and the council came and shredded it, the other's still standing like an arborial skeleton.
Is this the die-back ? How do we find out ? If it is, then it's been here for years and we just didn't know.
M
It has been found on a Woodland Trust site in my region and the possibilities are frightening.
If we don't understand the process by which it spreads then how can we stop it? We can't.
I heard that one of the diagnostic signs is new side shoots from the bark; as the leaves die the tree "panics" and tries to regenerate.
I truly fear the worst here; Denmark has lost 90% of its Ash.
If we don't understand the process by which it spreads then how can we stop it? We can't.
I heard that one of the diagnostic signs is new side shoots from the bark; as the leaves die the tree "panics" and tries to regenerate.
I truly fear the worst here; Denmark has lost 90% of its Ash.
Ash is a weed tree here.
Honestly, several of us have helped Countryside Rangers cut them down and thin them out on a site we used, simply because they grow so thickly in some areas that they smother slower growing Oaks.
Mature Ash are beautiful trees, but if they do go, then there'll be huge great gaps. Silver birch is the only tree that spreads in such numbers too around here.
I must have weeded out a hundred Ash seedlings this year alone. The keys wedge between the slabs and set down in the gravel of the garden paths, and root in among the hedges. Before you know it they're four foot high.
One of my neighbours just had her gutters cleaned out, and there were three Ash seedlings growing there too.
Surely they grow as prolifically elsewhere too ?
How do we find out how long the seeds remain viable ? and how do we find out how to stop this fungus ?
cheers,
M
Honestly, several of us have helped Countryside Rangers cut them down and thin them out on a site we used, simply because they grow so thickly in some areas that they smother slower growing Oaks.
Mature Ash are beautiful trees, but if they do go, then there'll be huge great gaps. Silver birch is the only tree that spreads in such numbers too around here.
I must have weeded out a hundred Ash seedlings this year alone. The keys wedge between the slabs and set down in the gravel of the garden paths, and root in among the hedges. Before you know it they're four foot high.
One of my neighbours just had her gutters cleaned out, and there were three Ash seedlings growing there too.
Surely they grow as prolifically elsewhere too ?
How do we find out how long the seeds remain viable ? and how do we find out how to stop this fungus ?
cheers,
M
It could well be devastating in the short term but one of the greatest strengths of evolution means most living things have amazing genetic diversity. There will be a percentage that will survive that are immune or more resilient to the fungus and new trees can be grown from those. Hopefully the outbreak can be contained but we are so close to Europe the odd spore will always come across on the wind.
A pictorial guide from the FC:
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Symp...ymptoms_guide_Chalara_dieback_of_ash_2012.pdf
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Symp...ymptoms_guide_Chalara_dieback_of_ash_2012.pdf
In the north of Holland (where i live) ash dieback is very widespread. Devestation of ash in the countryside is huge and the percentage of ash that have survived is next to nothing. Surprisingly enough, ash trees within a buildup enviroment have suffered much less. Still the effects can be seen throughout the cities.
As you say, genetic diversity is the key. This is only mother nature trying to even things out. It is where we have created a monoculture of trees that the devestation will be most apprieciated. Hopefully we will learn (again) from this experience and use the diversity of nature to aid us.
TurboGirl
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Don't confuse it with the indigenous ash die-back which we have here... apparently it manifests very similar to the european newcomer with the crown withering but the trees aren't decimated by it.
I always look for ash to burn but gosh, it'll be a sad day to see the quantities down that we saw in the 80s with the dutch elms. What region are you from, Stringmaker? I thought it had only been found in imported ash trees in East Anglia and not in the wild :S
I always look for ash to burn but gosh, it'll be a sad day to see the quantities down that we saw in the 80s with the dutch elms. What region are you from, Stringmaker? I thought it had only been found in imported ash trees in East Anglia and not in the wild :S
Sounds like it's very easy to confuse the two. Are there any differences in the symptoms to help diagnosis?
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I am in East Anglia.
The local news last night featured some FC guys in the Woodland Trust site very near me, which is a confirmed infection. It looked like relatively young stands infected so far but the fear is that it will spread.
The Ash trees as a species have seen far worse things than this, and come through OK. The last ice age for one....
Nature is always interesting, sometimes seemingly cruel and unfair, and sometimes downright alarming. But I'm always surprised that we employ people to run around yelling "Panic!!" at the top of their lungs while the planet is going about its business.
Nature is always interesting, sometimes seemingly cruel and unfair, and sometimes downright alarming. But I'm always surprised that we employ people to run around yelling "Panic!!" at the top of their lungs while the planet is going about its business.
The planet may be going about its business but that doesn't detract from the visual and emotional impact this could have. Remember the outcry about the public forest sell of? People like trees; it is that simple.
My journey to work takes me past woodlands thick with Ash, not to mention the hedgerows and self seeded trees on the commons. I also know well the infected site near me, of which about 30% is Ash. It is bad enough to see a wonderful treeline scarred by brown chestnut trees; once the slow rot of the Ashes begins (IF it does, but I think its too late to contain it now. I hope I am wrong) then I for one will feel their loss simply because I am around to see it.
My journey to work takes me past woodlands thick with Ash, not to mention the hedgerows and self seeded trees on the commons. I also know well the infected site near me, of which about 30% is Ash. It is bad enough to see a wonderful treeline scarred by brown chestnut trees; once the slow rot of the Ashes begins (IF it does, but I think its too late to contain it now. I hope I am wrong) then I for one will feel their loss simply because I am around to see it.
Well indeed, stringmaker. But from a purely pragmatic point of view if a tree is killed by disease it is because it was its time.
Using the phrases like "Ecological Catastrophe" (as several news outlets are doing) to really mean "a natural event humans wont like" is daft. A nuclear waste spill into the North Sea would be an ecological catastrophe, this is just nature refusing to play by man's rules.
It's a pity yes, and the countryside wont be the same afterwards. But there's no reason to expect that nature should adhere to our aesthetic preferences.
Using the phrases like "Ecological Catastrophe" (as several news outlets are doing) to really mean "a natural event humans wont like" is daft. A nuclear waste spill into the North Sea would be an ecological catastrophe, this is just nature refusing to play by man's rules.
It's a pity yes, and the countryside wont be the same afterwards. But there's no reason to expect that nature should adhere to our aesthetic preferences.
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There is another factor to consider with the planet going about its business statement.
Man
If nature was allowed to take its natural course then the spread of this disease would be a potentially slow one with weather and animals being the vectors. It would stay localised for a good while.
Given the fact that millions of plants are imported into the uk every year and transported around the country often in uncovered vehicles means that diseases now spread much more quickly. This has been noted with other diseases that have thankfully been contained but spread quickly along transport corridors from the port of origin.
I, for one, hope it is contained and doesn't spread. As I said in the thread I started a month or so ago here, about this same disease, it has the potential to devastate our treescape as Dutch elm did not that long ago. The hedge rows already look bare with the loss of the elm. Take out the ash and the landscape will be even more bare.
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Man
If nature was allowed to take its natural course then the spread of this disease would be a potentially slow one with weather and animals being the vectors. It would stay localised for a good while.
Given the fact that millions of plants are imported into the uk every year and transported around the country often in uncovered vehicles means that diseases now spread much more quickly. This has been noted with other diseases that have thankfully been contained but spread quickly along transport corridors from the port of origin.
I, for one, hope it is contained and doesn't spread. As I said in the thread I started a month or so ago here, about this same disease, it has the potential to devastate our treescape as Dutch elm did not that long ago. The hedge rows already look bare with the loss of the elm. Take out the ash and the landscape will be even more bare.
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Man is part of nature, and he's been moving plants from one region to another for 10's of thousands of years. This could have as easily have happened in the time of Ötzi the Iceman as now so there's nothing unnatural about this.
Unless you'd only class events on an Earth completely devoid of human life as "natural" of course.
Unless you'd only class events on an Earth completely devoid of human life as "natural" of course.
Indeed man has been moving plants from one region to another (I would question the 10's of thousands bit but that's just pedantry) but not from country to country, continent to continent and not in the vast numbers that are moved these days.
I'm not saying this couldn't have happened thousands of years ago. I am saying that the spread of plant based diseases is potentially being accelerated by mans moving of plant material that has been intensively propagated and grown in high concentration of numbers.
There is a good chance that this disease may have never arrived on britains shores had it not been imported on a lorry load of ash standards.
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I'm not saying this couldn't have happened thousands of years ago. I am saying that the spread of plant based diseases is potentially being accelerated by mans moving of plant material that has been intensively propagated and grown in high concentration of numbers.
There is a good chance that this disease may have never arrived on britains shores had it not been imported on a lorry load of ash standards.
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I think that if this disease vector is man, or rather our ease of transport, then it is another in a long line of introductions of pest species 
Nature does 'accomodate', eventually, but we and other organisms live in the 'now', and we're moving stuff too quickly for nature to cope well with problems like this.
The island nature of our home is both a boon and a restriction. We have a limited flora and fauna from the mainland European continent anyway; maybe we should be a bit more careful about what we bring home.
M
p.s. Sorry, cross posted with Stuey
Nature does 'accomodate', eventually, but we and other organisms live in the 'now', and we're moving stuff too quickly for nature to cope well with problems like this.
The island nature of our home is both a boon and a restriction. We have a limited flora and fauna from the mainland European continent anyway; maybe we should be a bit more careful about what we bring home.
M
p.s. Sorry, cross posted with Stuey
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