This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable

[KamaAina]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/02/this-disease-has-killed-a-million-trees-in-california-and-scientists-say-its-basically-unstoppable/

Healthy forests are especially important at a time of climate change — they’re an incredible tool to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Dead forests, on the other hand, can light the spark for wildfires, which are already showing a long-predicted uptick in activity.

In California’s coastal forests, health is anything but good. Since 1995, a fungal pathogen that causes a phenomenon dubbed ‘sudden oak death’ (a far catchier name than that of the pathogen itself, Phytophthora ramorum) has taken out millions of oak and tanoak trees, particularly along the coast extending northward from Monterey County. That includes areas of Marin County, Sonoma County and Big Sur....

“Millions of acres of land have been affected in coastal California,” says Richard Cobb, a postdoc at the University of California, Davis, who studies the disease. “It spreads via wind and rain, and it’s made some really big jumps to different parts of the state and into Oregon. It probably spread into California via the nursery trade. And it has been moved around the country a lot, also within the nursery trade.”

Unfortunately, new research on this invasive disease, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday by Cobb and a group of colleagues, finds that while there may once have been a chance to stop the spread of sudden oak death — around the year 2002 — that opportunity has since passed. Forces didn’t mobilize fast enough or spend enough money, and the disease model employed in the new research (a model not so dissimilar from those used to study how various diseases can spread among humans) suggests continual spread of the disease.

[SunSeeker]

1. Damn. Between that and the pine beetles, it's amazing we have any trees.

[Dems to Win]

2. Spread by "The nursery trade"

Any plant can grow in Sonoma County, California. Luther Burbank grew all kinds of stuff here, and developed new varieties of plums and other plants.

But no, WalMart must have 6-packs of flowers imported from some cheap labor high volume seed farm to sell Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!

We could have prevented this, and the glassy wing sharpshooter pest, from ever entering our county merely by requiring every plant sold in Sonoma County had to be grown from seed in Sonoma County. But no, mustn't interfere with free trade and free commerce.

Our society is a helpless giant, unable to make even simple, common sense decisions to solve obvious problems.

All of the tan oaks in my area have died from Sudden Oak Death. Gone. The real oaks are tougher; some have died but many still live. It's not clear if they've resisted the fungus, or are just not showing signs yet.

[KamaAina]

3. "Any plant can grow in Sonoma County, California."

Didn't see too many coffee trees when I was up that way a couple of years ago.

[Brother Buzz]

4. A pox on Burbank for all the Frankenstein cherry-plum trees that escaped his nursery...

before being perfected.