Ash dieback

[Stere]

Whats happing to all the ash trees where you are.?

 

Locally alot of mature hegde  row trees are effected,a few are completely dead, loads are  half dead, a few still look healthy. Not seen any felled even the many 100% dead ones over roads.

 

They will start dropping large branches soon. Seems a shame all that firewood is going to waste, on the other hand a suppose all the standing dead wood is good habitat.

 

Countryside is going to look very barren with no trees left apart from the odd sycamore as i'd say ash was over 80% of the  hedge trees round here. Its still not the same after all the elms dissapered from the hegdes, when/if all ash goes won't be many trees at all left in large areas of farm land.

 

 

Maybe there needs to be some goverment scheme for restocking hegderow trees, though plantin in hegdes is abit tricky?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2018 by Stere

[gary112]

Same here a lot of trees looking half dead but also a young plantation i planted 10yrs ago has got it real bad most of em are completely dead now

[steve collins]

woodlands have been hit hard in the south east, lots of felling has been going on for years and a few sites have been thinned where there are lots of dead standing and seasoned trees!  this is with still healthy trees next to completely dead. One site is so bad a clearfell is likely to happen, another has mature 70 foot plus trees where there is lots of decay in the base making felling difficult. most landowners and agents are on the case where trees have been monitored prior to the works but looks like the ash tree is going to be a rare site soon

[CutterSy]

We have been hammering the Ash for the last 2 years now. Some sites are just showing first signs, some are full of dead rotten dangerous trees! It’s everywhere here, rarely see a healthy one. Heart breaking really.
I think it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed or seriously injured whilst felling them. Be extra careful, some that still look reasonable have been very bad. Hitting wedges is a big no no, shock loading is a very bad idea!
We have a few estates now stating to take the risk near paths and road a bit more seriously, but many aren’t.

[Mark Wileman]

I've not been in the game long enough to track my Ash trees but I've got 4 mature 20m ash out the back of my house, they were fine last summer but all show mass die back and a lot of epigormoc at all all the major unions. Are people witnessing trees fighting it off o er a few years (due to lack of leaves meaning lack of ability for it to deploy spores on spring as there isn't as much infected leaf matter ). I'm tempted to rigidly burn all leaves as they fall this autumn to see if it makes a difference next year, but with it being windborne I'm not holding much hope.

[Mark Wileman]

If every ash tree didnt come into leaf for 1 year we'd be rid of it, right?

[Woodworks]

Not widespread here (West Devon) but few are showing early signs. Only completely dead ash trees are some whips we planted on our hedges and still not positive as to cause of death of those. 

Edited September 9, 2018 by Woodworks

[openspaceman]

7 hours ago, Mark Wileman said:

If every ash tree didnt come into leaf for 1 year we'd be rid of it, right?

The reason for retaining ash trees seems to be in order to establish some sort of resistant genetic strains, I would say if you can see it's chalara (as opposed to other)induced dieback then there's no resistance worth keeping As ash is relatively perishable it's best cropped soonest.  Deterioration of ash has been mentioned in threads today by GaryP and @Alycidon

Edited September 9, 2018 by openspaceman
spelling

[Gary Prentice]

1 hour ago, Woodworks said:

Not widespread here (West Devon) but few are showing early signs. Only completely dead ash trees are some whips we planted on our hedges and still not positive as to cause of death of those. 

Just really becoming noticeable around Manchester. Last summer , once you got your eye in, it was pretty much everywhere in young trees (up to 5-6 m generally) 

 

This summer I’ve seen a couple of, what I think, are infected mature trees. Local TOs say they’ve spotted a very small number themselves. 

 

With little recent media coverage, the average tree owner seems very much unaware of the threat. Although we’ve had couple of mountain ash where the owner suspected infection

[Mark Wileman]

1 hour ago, openspaceman said:

The reason for retaining ash trees seems to be in order to establish some sort of resistant genetic strains, I would say if you can see it's chalara (as opposed to other)induced dieback then there's no resistance worth keeping As ash is relatively perishable it's best cropped soonest.  Detieration of ash has been mentioned in threads today by GaryP and @Alycidon

As the infection is annual, chalara needs healthy trees to infect is my understanding? Therefore if it gets so bad that trees get so bad that they wont come into leaf then all it takes is those mature tree with a root stock large enough to survive one or two years of having no canopy? Does that then mean that even of all ash gets hit then by default larger trees will survive?