I guess I'd better stop telling people to put their bonsai outdoors!


From E&E's Greenwire, Wednesday, May 26, 2004 [subscription required]

Pa. confirms first case of sudden oak death

A bonsai camellia tree in southeastern Pennsylvania has the state's first
case of sudden oak death, state Department of Agriculture officials confirmed
yesterday (AP/San Francisco Chronicle online, May 25
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...004/05/25/stat
e2056EDT0193.DTL).

The infected tree likely did not spread the fungus because it had been
indoors but was shipped from a Southern California nursery in January,
according to state Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff.

Officials said they want to contain the infection for fear it could spread to
the eastern forests of the Appalachian Mountains in what could be the worst
fungal infection there since 1960 (Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 26
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04147/322024.stm).

The Agriculture Department announced this month that it will spend about
$15.5 million to try to stop the spread of sudden oak death, which has killed
thousands of trees across the West Coast. The agency will spend about $6.9
million of the funds on a survey of the nation's nurseries and the remaining
$8.6 million on "quarantine and identification programs" in California.

Sudden oak death has killed 40 to 45 percent of live oaks in the hardest-hit
areas, such as Marin County, north of San Francisco. The disease is a microbe
that disburses its spores to neighboring trees, turns a tree's foliage from
green to brown in a manner of weeks and completely kills the tree weeks
later. However, the malady actually quietly ravages the tree for years before
it shows any symptoms. The pathogen, phytophthora ramorum, has been tracked
in more than 16 hosts, including several species of oak, coast redwoods,
douglas firs and plants such as huckleberry and rhododendron (Greenwire, May
19). -- HJ


---
Nina Shishkoff


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