London Planes In Trouble

[5 shires]

Well it looks like London Planes are being attacked by a Fungus now,some of the queens trees at Buckingham Palace have a fungus(Massaria) which is attacking the tress’s  there and in the Royal Parks and slowly moving around the capital it doesn’t kill the tree as such but can do if the diseased are not removed  for the week being of the tree and safety reasons.councils have no money as it is so just another nail in the coffin for some of our fabulous trees.

[Mick Dempsey]

I cannot put links up but David Humphries started a thread called ‘Massaria on the March’ which has lots of info on it.

 

You can find it with the search function.

[Steve Bullman]

 

[Mr. Squirrel]

It's more significant as a safety risk to people than it is to tree health really. Yes, it kills branches, but individual branches, and often ones which were liable to be shed due to shading anyway. Annual inspections and removal of affected branches typically don't require a great deal of time, you may only need to remove 2 or 3 branches, and so are quite efficient.

More concerning in my mind was the recommendation I saw some time ago that reducing trees is effective at preventing the spread of Massaria.

 

[spuddog0507]

Is this something else that has come across the water from Europe ? Pytothera in larch ash die back and the other one with the moths on the oaks ? if we keep going like this we wont have any trees left,

[Mr. Squirrel]

Yes, it's had a natural migration North from the Mediterranean due to the warming climate. As to how it got over the channel, who can say... I'd say it is more significant to public safety than phytophthora ramorum or Ash dieback, however in my experience far less so to tree health. As I said, it targets individual branches rather than the whole tree, so is unlikely to result in tree death.