Pest Of The Week

Aren’t you just sick of migrants coming over here from Eastern Europe wreaking havoc with our British way of life? Take the emerald ash borer.

This tiny beetle has moved from Asia, through Russia and the Baltic states and has landed on these shores imperilling our dwindling stock of ash trees. It is likely to finish the job started off by ash dieback disease, with the ability to kill trees in two to three years. The larvae feed off the tree, disrupting the flow of nutrients and water to the tree. They spread at a rate of 25 miles a year and are thought to have come into the country in firewood imported from Eastern Europe.

The biologist at Queen Mary’s College in charge of finding which of the world’s 35 species of ash is resistant to the beetle and the disease, Richard Buggs – you couldn’t make it up – has his hopes on the Manchurian ash.

In the meantime spot checks will be carried out on imported firewood to halt the beetle’s spread.

Don’t tell Nigel!

Ashes To Ashes?

 

I well remember the devastation caused to the English countryside caused by Dutch Elm disease. I was particularly distressed when a wonderful avenue of elms from the rear of my alma mater to the Backs had to be cut down.

Dutch elm disease was a fungal based disease and first appeared in north-west Europe in 1910. It came to Britain with a vengeance with a more virulent strain in the 60s and within a decade 20 million elms out of the estimated UK elm population of 30 million were dead. By the 1990s the number was well over 25 million.

It now appears that the ash is under threat from a fungus called Chalara fraxinea. Chalara dieback causes leaf loss and crown dieback in affected trees and can lead to the death of the tree. The disease has been found widely across Europe and it first made its appearance in the UK in February of this year when a consignment of infected trees was sent from the Netherlands to a nursery in Buckinghamshire. In June ash trees planted in a car park in Leicestershire which were supplied by a nursery in Lincolnshire were found to be infected.

To date, the disease has not been found outside nurseries and recent plantings in the UK. However, the authorities are very worried and asking everyone to be vigilant and report any trees they suspect to be affected.

Let’s hope the noble ash will not be a rarity like the elm now is today.