Trees in terrible condition everywhere - advice and opinions needed

[Kveldssanger]

To add (for just a few species):

 

Ornamental cherries - bacterial canker of cherry

Planes - anthracnose

Willows - anthracnose / rust / aphids

Poplars - rust / canker (Xanthomonas)

Elm - DED

Ash - Chalara / canker

Oak - AOD / mildew

Horse chestnut - blotch, miner, canker, blight

Sweet chestnut - gall wasp

 

So many more...

[Quercus Robert]

First, Paul, I tried uploading some last night from my phone using my usual mail server but it placed a 2 MB limit so I went to bed. I've just tried gmail and it seems to work so here's one with the bark burned off almost all the way around.

[Kveldssanger]

They are very old wounds. Has the forest been managed - mechanical wounds from site clearance, perhaps. Ungulate browsing?

[Quercus Robert]

Kveldssanger - please tell me you have a handier handle - I just looked up the Milgram experiment. Though I have come across this before, it was good to refresh myself with the details. Milgram's summary, that "relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority", is quite a happy thing.

 

Per the rest of your very coherent post, I for one agree with your points, though the Anthropocene hadn't seemed such a bad thing for trees until recently (when I got my sunglasses). Can you explain more about soil pH change, and aluminium/nitrogen pollution (or link me to a trusted resource)? I was already aware of massive levels of methane being released from permafrosted deposits in Siberia, though I thought methane is more of a 'Venus Syndrome' greenhouse gas agent than something specifically harmful to trees.

[Quercus Robert]

This is managed woodland. This particular area is next to a wide path and has been thinned. Children often run up and down, and stack up branches. This tree in this area by itself is not necessarily indicative of a problem but this symptom is present on just about all the chestnuts (and birch, and beech, and rowan) in the area, whether people are tramping through or not. This particular section is called West Walk and covers 350 hectares.

[Quercus Robert]

When you say that these are old wounds, do you mean to say that the damage is not ongoing?

[Kveldssanger]

Kveldssanger - please tell me you have a handier handle - I just looked up the Milgram experiment. Though I have come across this before, it was good to refresh myself with the details. Milgram's summary, that "relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority", is quite a happy thing.

 

Per the rest of your very coherent post, I for one agree with your points, though the Anthropocene hadn't seemed such a bad thing for trees until recently (when I got my sunglasses). Can you explain more about soil pH change, and aluminium/nitrogen pollution (or link me to a trusted resource)? I was already aware of massive levels of methane being released from permafrosted deposits in Siberia, though I thought methane is more of a 'Venus Syndrome' greenhouse gas agent than something specifically harmful to trees.

 

With regards to the Milgram Experiment, I was looking at it from the angle that even though we know nature is struggling, we still continue what we always did (by-and-large) because that is the way the system works. The experiment is somewhat 'allegorical' to my point, though I do feel it stands. One cannot question that nature is struggling - it seems that a mix of peer pressure and, more widely, the system as a whole construct, means change just isn't happening. For instance, how feasible is it for a sudden reduction in the use of petrol and diesel for cars to take place? The 'authority' in this case is 'the system'. On topic of the Milgram Experiment in a literal sense, I would suggest it had a very depressing result.

 

Soil pH change - pollution will acidify (or alkify) soil. The 'expected' pH range is from between 6-5-7.5 (6.8 being 'botanical' neutral, roughly), though of course there is natural variation. However, when we input pollutants, such as fossil fuel emissions, soil acidification via deposition of nitrogen, sulphur, aluminum, and other mineral ions is bad. Aluminum, for example, blocks root nodules, interrupts root-mycorrhizae relationships, and 'leeches' other elements from the soil (calcium, for example, though also iron I do believe). A quick search of Google Scholar will provide many results for aluminum toxicity to plants (and humans! - one of the causes of Alzheimer's, hence the aluminum levels in the air being way above 'safe' is so tragically horrifying).

 

There are many studies on the effect of nitrogen on plants that are already sick, again on Google Scholar (and books, too). Basically, nitrogen encourages plants to use their stored energy for growth. This is all well and good in healthy plants, though when a plant is stressed and has low stored energy, undesirably high levels of soil nitrogen will basically force the plant to allocate its reserves for growth, then leaving it wide open to attack as it now lacks any significant energy reserves. That's the danger is using a nitrogen fertiliser on a sick plant - it won't do it any good, even though the new growth will give the illusion of the plant recovering.

 

With my pollution comment on methane etc, I was speaking more macro-cosmically about how we influence so many things. Methane is a driver in the currently-dubbed 'greenhouse effect' (the sun (CMEs, sun spots, etc) also plays a massive role but that rarely gets covered in depth by the media, but that's another matter entirely). As the climate changes, trees' phenological cycles shift. Compiled with the attrition on trees due to general pollution, fragmentation, and otherwise, the changing phenology is gong to stress the tree - a system cannot cope with so many potentially-overloading factors working against it. I suppose a tree has a 'safety factor' when it comes to its functionality as a system, much like it has a structural safety factor in wind-loading (or other loading) conditions.

 

 

This is managed woodland. This particular area is next to a wide path and has been thinned. Children often run up and down, and stack up branches. This tree in this area by itself is not necessarily indicative of a problem but this symptom is present on just about all the chestnuts (and birch, and beech, and rowan) in the area, whether people are tramping through or not. This particular section is called West Walk and covers 350 hectares.

 

When you say that these are old wounds, do you mean to say that the damage is not ongoing?

 

The damage is likely to be ongoing in places, though that photo as a stand-alone one shows old ribbing callus growth. In some respects one can say the trunk is now fluting as a result.

 

As the woodland is managed, some wounds may be to do with logging operations, I dare say some smaller wounds created by whatever means have lead to frost damage, and the use of the site by humans has also likely had a contribution. If deer are present, they will also initiate damage to trees.

 

I do wonder whether, and this is a pure hypothesis, the fluctuations in annual weather patterns is leading to spontaneous xylem cavitation in trees.

Edited September 20, 2015 by Kveldssanger

[Quercus Robert]

Sorry, missed this post earlier.

 

To add (for just a few species):

 

Ornamental cherries - bacterial canker of cherry

Planes - anthracnose

Willows - anthracnose / rust / aphids

Poplars - rust / canker (Xanthomonas)

Elm - DED

Ash - Chalara / canker

Oak - AOD / mildew

Horse chestnut - blotch, miner, canker, blight

Sweet chestnut - gall wasp

 

So many more...

 

Cherries - not only ornamental, I'm afraid. All, AFAIC. Black (serotina), sour red cherries (avium?), ornamental, I can think of a few different types that I see around and they all have cankers or at the very least gummosis. The cankers are crazy-bad on some of the bigger trees. Crazy-bad is my official diagnosis.

 

Planes - yes, I think the planes I see have this. In Fareham, they are planted all through town and the final twelve inches of the branches are shriveled and blanched. These are generally younger trees than they have in the centre of Southampton and in Portsmouth, where they are defoliating (as of July).

 

Willows and poplars - regrettably I have not paid enough attention or been well-enough informed about diseases. I do not recall rust but I shall look from now on.

 

Ash - yup.

 

Oak - I previously was noting only the "retrenchment" of oaks but now I see quite a lot of the leaking black fluid and evidence of borers - either those exit holes or the heaps of waste they cast out, plus bare heartwood.

 

Horse chestnut - *shudder*

 

Sweet chestnut - I haven't seen galls but I have seen horrible bark damage. I will post images later so you can assess.

[Quercus Robert]

With my pollution comment on methane etc, I was speaking more macro-cosmically about how we influence so many things. Methane is a driver in the currently-dubbed 'greenhouse effect' (the sun (CMEs, sun spots, etc) also plays a massive role but that rarely gets covered in depth by the media, but that's another matter entirely). As the climate changes, trees' phenological cycles shift. Compiled with the attrition on trees due to general pollution, fragmentation, and otherwise, the changing phenology is gong to stress the tree - a system cannot cope with so many potentially-overloading factors working against it. I suppose a tree has a 'safety factor' when it comes to its functionality as a system, much like it has a structural safety factor in wind-loading (or other loading) conditions.

 

If I can just respond to this paragraph first - yes, it is certainly the case that the usual factors affecting evolution are moving at warp speed, with the effect that in a geological eye-blink an entire geographical region has experienced climatic change, toxic overload, fragmentation of environment and population, mass introduction of foreign competitors and pests, and anthropomorphs stamping all over the place transmitting pathogens and setting fire to things and leaving Strongbow cans everywhere.

 

The global extinction rate is currently about 10,000 times the background rate, with anywhere between 200-300 species becoming extinct every day. That puts us squarely in the middle (I'd argue tail end) of the Sixth great mass extinction.

 

I wonder what Stanley Milgram would say.

[Kveldssanger]

Aye. It's the rate of change, not the change in itself. Trees have always responded to change, as has every other species, though generational turnover in trees is simply not quick enough. Some trees don't produce seed for decades, or require the right conditions to do so (which may require insects, temperature conditions, etc, that are lacking due to the rapid change).