Redwood Reader

www.suddenoakdeath.org
California Oak Mortality Task Force”s November nerwsletter contained this small article causing great concern for me. This is our neighborhood, and I have been writing about SOD since 2000. We note how fortunate there are trained people that recognize the problem in the field.

“A new Phytophthora ramorum-infested site in Humboldt County has been confirmed 6 miles north of the Garberville/Redway area on Humboldt Redwoods State Park property along the Avenue of the Giants. The site features a moderately steep hillside dissected by ephemeral drainages running directly into the South Fork Eel River. Old-growth redwood, in places with an understory of nearly pure California bay laurel, grows on the site’s lower slopes; the stand grades into a Douglas-fir/tanoak and madrone mix on upper slopes. Symptoms are found in both forest types.
A tree inspector for Western Environmental Consultants International (WECI - a contractor to PG&E’s vegetation management program) identified the presence of bleeding cankers on numerous tanoak trees and notified University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE), Humboldt County staff, who sampled tanoak shoots and bark as well as California bay laurel leaves from the site. All three kinds of samples yielded P. ramorum at the UC Davis Rizzo lab. Numerous symptomatic hosts, including California black oak, madrone, and Douglas-fir, have since been observed on the site and sampled; results are pending. UCCE Humboldt County and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) have proposed to California State Parks that an adaptive management trial designed to reduce P. ramorum inoculum and slow pathogen spread to adjacent sites be implemented. State Parks has begun the review process for the project.”

Other SOD news includes the stream sampling with rhododendron, which gives a presence indicator in watersheds. The 2005 National P. ramorum Survey of Forest Environments debriefing in Atlanta summarizing forest field work in 39 states; the extent of spread in the U.K., including chestnut and witch hazel among others, a discussion of nursery epidemiology including overhead vs. drip watering to control spread in nursery conditions, Forest Service models of risk assessment for the nation and other timely information including links and a calendar of events.
In Cherokee Country, Reviving a Tree's Deep Roots
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1107_051108_cherokee_2.html This article is from the National Geographic newsletter concerning restoring butternut to its home range with river cane, an associated species important for Eastern Cherokee cultural uses. This story has it all, a historical site of importance, Native Americans purchasing ancestral homelands, 95% dead trees and only 2% river cane left, trying to restore a tree crop ravaged by an imported fungus disease, natural suppression of competitors by the butternuts with river cane able to take advantage, traditional uses of the plants, ecological restoration and tree improvement and a commitment to educate the young in traditional culture all rolled into one. Great Stuff.