Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anyone else get burned up about Invasive Species

There is a town with lots of mature chestnuts in Oregon. Of course, it they were planted and the disease never made it there as that the nearest chestnut tree was probably 2000 miles away.

More interestingly, an entire grove of mature chestnuts was found within the last few years on a mountain in Georgia. No one knows why they have survived.

Perhaps, most interestingly, the blight doesn't kill the trees. It girdles them once they reach maturity causing the mature tree to die. But, the stump stays alive and sends up new shoots and saplings...which promptly die before they reach maturity. Today, the chestnut is basically a shrub.

Seems like I remember hearing about that stand in Georgia, now that you mention it. I don't have any first hand experience with American chestnut (it's native range never made it this far west), byt I've done quite a bit of work on the Ozark chinquapin, the chestnut's smaller cousin. The chinquapins here were hit by the blight in the mid-40's and were hammered pretty hard. I have only found one tree that was old enough to have been mature at the time that blight hit this region. Chinquapins seem to have quite a bit more inherent resistance to blight than the chestnuts do. A fairly decent percentage survive long enough to reproduce, and some natural seedling establishment is occuring. If given enough time, I am confident that natural selection will result in blight-resistent trees. As for the blight-stricken trees re-sprouting from the root collar, they can not do this indefinately. I have found several dozen trees that the root systems eventually starved out after 3 or 4 cycles of die back and re-sprouting.

Muledude , Whitepine desease, would you be talking of "Blister Rust" we have that here in Washington it is spread by the red flowering current and other (sp) rybeis species. I know where there is a patch of American Chestnuts. there are still some left but not a lot.

Bullwinkl

Fire ants? Been bitten so many times it feels odd when I ain't, but I have great hopes for that tiny fly that eats their brains what appears to be taking hold.

My own local pet peeve is bermudagrass, although I expect ranchers like it well enough. In the heat it outcompetes and drowns out everything else and worse, puts out seed too tiny to serve as a food source.

Birdwatcher

Don't know what causes it, but it must be foreign, possibly Canadian. After all, now they got all the lumber.

I have found american chestnut trees in Pa and Wv. they are making a come back and are resistant to the blight that killed them off. they don't live long yet but do produce chestnuts I believe they are evolving to a new tree.

Bermuda is a whole lot better as a yard grass than St. Augustine.... IMHO. Something you don't have to baby, waste water on, most weed killers work well in it, responds great to fertilizer, everything I can tell is a plus.

Fire Ants.... but remember how many chiggers or ticks do you see now? I've about figured out how to deal with the ants, course had that figured with the others too, and the last 3-4 years the drought had the ants down deep.....

Jeff

Purple Loostrife has done a number on our cattail swamps and low lying drainage areas. Japanese Knotweed is another that should have stayed home.

Jojoba trees or bushes will stop anything in its tracks. They produce a fruit that varmits scatter and the thing produces more bushes from the roots. The thorns are so sharp that if you try to pick a fruit they bring blood. And they will take over the property. Local goverment used to pick them and send the seeds all over the country before they found out how bad they are.