Bad News Ash Disease discovered in East Anglia

[Paul Cleaver]

news just in - found on a nursery in cheshire

[Crazy Cutter]

I have some coppice work this year which will include ash , and is is to be taken of site . I was told if ash die back is found in the wood no timber will be allowed of site , from fc , a rumour i hope

 

We can only hope they see sense. The horse has not only bolted but is already dead. Any knee jerk reactions now are too late and will only harm the economy. Leave the trees as they are or fell only for public safety and cut as firewood within your coppice or thinning programme. Burning on site will be an utter waste of time as the disease will be country wide by now. Many of the confirmed sighting are hedgerow regrowth so banning access to woodland won't work. How many infected hedges have already been flailed?

[Nimby]

news just in - found on a nursery in cheshire

 

Can you show us the source of info please?

[Paul Cleaver]

a nursery at knutsford - info via northwest TV

[daveindales]

I'll be sad to see the loss our Ash woodlands, but trees have been dying on mass for thousands of years naturally, in the long term one trees loss will be another trees gain, I see Oak and Hazel benefiting enormously and filling the void,the trouble with us humans is we see everything in human terms.

 

An excellent post, and one I totally agree with.

[sloth]

Does anyone know of any ash specific fungi, (or other ecology)? I seem to remember Gerritt J Keizer (and his tree species specific ecosystem, TSSE) stating F excelsior associated with generalistic endomycohizal microfungi; does this mean it has no TSSE? Obviously there is the ash bark beetle, does that utilise other species in a pinch? Does the TSSE refer only to fungi? Where's Gerritt when he's needed! I miss him

Is C fraxinea known to affect other trees, or just ash? All of the Fraxinus genus?

I wonder how much of the dead wood saproxylic species gap might be filled if enough infected ash trees are left in-situ? (Did anyone get the recently published biodiversity in deadwood book, any pearls of wisdom to share?)

In my experience the decay and hollowing by Innonotus hispidus in ash is prime woodpecker nesting sites, would hispidus have the same decay and emergence patterns in a dead ash; or does the tree need to be living? I don't recall seeing it fruit from a dead ash before...

I suppose even in just stump form ash wood seems favored by stag and other beetle grubs.

I'm just trying to see a silver lining to this great loss besides an increase in felling jobs and large firewood stores!

Sorry for the rambling post, thoughts on a postcard please...

[HCR]

^^

 

Good post. The loss of many ash trees will be a significant one, but there will also be opportunities. This is an excellent short article: Ash die-back is now a fact of life ? what now? | Wild Comment

 

Saproxylic species may benefit. Knee-jerk felling/burning etc is (a) pointless and (b) counter-productive. I'm deeply alarmed at some suggestions (including from Professor Boyd at Defra) that hybrids/alternatives can be injected into our ecosystem to replace ash. This could prove worse that Chalara itself.

 

Another point is that our ash came from a south western Europe enclave after the last ice age, and other country's stock came from the south east (e.g. Denmark). This means that the two populations were genetically isolated for a long time; not long enough for speciation to occur, but enough for unique mutations to take effect.

 

For this reason alone, we need to be very cautious about how me react. I strongly suspect that our ash population will respond quite quickly (given the prolific seeding nature of the species) and a resistant strain will probably prevail within our lifetimes.

[HCR]

In response to comments made on another thread about the likelihood (or otherwise) of spores blowing over from Europe:

 

The prevailing wind is from the SW, but it does sometimes blow from other directions as well. You can check data here: Weather Station History | Weather Underground

 

June to October is the sporing period, so a couple of days of the wind blowing from the continent in those months in 2010 or 2011 would have done it.

 

Yes, it's rather convenient for the govt to say it blew over the sea, but the depth of infection suggests it's had at least one reproductive cycle here.

 

However, I'm still furious that the govt failed to take any action in 2009 (or before!!) when the problem was spelt out to them.

[Andy Collins]

I think it's rather convenient to blame the wind for spreading the spores all the way across the North Sea, straight to the door of the nurseries, and not just one nursery, but several? A little far fetched for my imagination I'm afraid. Yes the wind veers in different directions, so the chance of the spores happening to land on a tiny island nation, against the main wind direction? If I were a Chalara spore, I'd be doing the Lottery this week

[David Humphries]

"Spores of a wheat rust have been reported to have been dispersed 1,243 miles (2000 km) by the wind"

 

 

Kendrick, B. 2002. The fifth kingdom, 3rd edition. Focus Publ., Newburyport, MA. ISBN 1-58510-022-6.

 

 

 

 

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