Ash dieback

[Paddy1000111]

2 hours ago, Undercut said:

Is the best option to fell sooner and retrieve some decent wood?
There doesn’t seem much logic in leaving the trees for years to deteriorate and become harder more dangerous to fell , all the ash around here is infected bad , and I’ve not seen any being felled due to chalara,it’s terminal is it not?

Depends on the tree. If it is DEFINATELY dying then yea, cut it down before its dead and becomes harder to fell. From what I have seen there appears to be some Ash that aren't effected by chalara. It's bad practice to just clear fell or cut them down as a routine "it's ash, bin it off" as we won't have any resistant strains. 

[Stere]

Anyone seen any trees recover someone said some trees  can/may still recover but iv'e not noticed any trees do that?

 

Seems to be the ones  with it  only getting worse so far?

 

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by Stere

[Paul in the woods]

No, I've not seen any of our trees recover. In the woodland that's about 30 years old I mark up trees at this time of year I want to remove over winter. Last year I didn't get around to it but some of the half dead trees I marked (with string) are now completely dead. 

 

You may stand a chance of saving a tree that's only showing a few signs of you remove all neighbouring ash and rake up leaves etc but I've not got round to trying that yet.

[Conor Wright]

No signs of recovery here, we live beside a failed ash plantation and it's become progressively worse year on year, all but one of our hedgerow ash are now showing signs of dieback, including one which I pruned back hard three years ago in a vain attempt to break the cycle. The regrowth looked OK for the first year but its become an arboricultural train wreck since and will have to be removed along with approx 10 others this winter. 

One tree which had stayed healthy looking despite being surrounded by diseased neighbouring trees has succumbed this year. I was hoping it was resistant but it appears not to be the case. 

The farm next door has a row of relatively healthy looking ash still, but lots showing rapid dieback this year too. 

Removed three ash yesterday for a client. one was completely dead and so brittle it was unchippable. It just disintegrated when it hit the ground. 

 

[Stubby]

I don't see any recovery , only trees that show slight symptoms next to others that are on their last legs .

[5thelement]

I can’t see why the UK Ash stock will fair any better than the rest of the EU countries affected.

I seem to remember Scandinavia calculated less than 6% showing resilience.

[openspaceman]

5 hours ago, 5thelement said:

I can’t see why the UK Ash stock will fair any better than the rest of the EU countries affected.

I seem to remember Scandinavia calculated less than 6% showing resilience.

The reason given back in 2015 was that although the disease was brought in on imported young stock overall UK ash population was largely self seeded so should have more variations in genotype, whereas forestry abroad was more managed with planting and the selection for best performance mean the genes were more restricted.

 

In the event it seems to make little difference because the sheer numbers of spores that are released by the leaf litter overcome even trees that show some resistance. Which is why I advocated sanitation felling in the woodland I was working in but FC and EN disagreed and the disease has now affected those trees which previously showed no signs.

 

I draw a corollary with covid initially, people who were repeatedly exposed had a high mortality before the virus lost some of its pathogenic effect but became more transmissible

 

The "control" tree I allowed to grow on from seed is now 5 years from seed and 15' tall with no sign of disease yet 99% of the regen where the seed came from has died simply because there are few ash near my home.