I have been doing some bush hogging around the farms the last few weeks, and have been noticing a lot of dead sassafras trees. They ranged in size from big ones to small ones, and I've been wondering what's going on. So, did a little internet research, and it appears that there is a disease called laurel wilt, that is spread by a redbay ambrosia beetle. Of course, it's an import from Asia, so it's nonnative, and therefore the trees are very susceptible to it.


I've got a lot of sassafras trees, probably too many, so I don't mind losing a few, but do hate to see any disease like this. I'd hate to see sassafras trees go the way of the American Chestnut tree. The disease also affects the redbay laurel trees.

Hope that stops...

Funny how the deadliest causes of loss of trees or life comes from nature itself.

Despite what liberals tell us...

There are systemic treatments but they really only make sense if you are trying to protect particularly valuable trees, like a nice tree in your yard.

No doubt that nearly all these invasive organisms responsible for wiping out so many plant species come from Asia. We are expecting emerald ash borer in my neck of the woods soon. I’ve been pushing my clients with valued ash trees to consider preventive treatments. Those that don’t will be removing dead ash trees in a few years.

Not going to stop. We’ve seen this happen time and time again.
Chestnut blight
Dutch elm disease
Emerald ash borer
Boxwood blight
Rose rosette
Laurel wilt
...

Before chestnut blight wiped out all the chestnuts, the American Chestnut was the most common hardwood tree in the eastern US. They we’re highly valuable for timber, wildlife and their nuts. Going through that again would be like losing all of our oak trees.

Jeffery,
We lost a lot of our oak trees to gypsy moths in the 80's into the 90's.
I remember mid summer, looking at the mountains, the trees were bare, every oak leaf
Eaten.

We still have oaks, but we seem to have lost most of the big ones.
3 foot plus trees just don't exist here anymore.


James, I hope our sassafras don't get it. Big ones make beautiful lumber,
And I like the tea.

Plus, i always liked burying my saw into a big sassafras or ash.
White wood, soft, a good saw is like a chip hose, you watch them fly
as the saw just eats wood. And it smells good.

Not like dry locust, where you think your saw is dull,
But the wood is just too darn hard to make big chips.

Mine died years ago.

Holy chit James

I have a tall, bent sass beside my shop and last couple months seems the whole top is dead and rest of the tree is 'dying'


Had no idea about the disease. If anything they are very hardy and nearly nuisance level around here.

I honestly thought my roundup spraying near it caused the malady.

If it doesn't work itself out, I'll have to cut it down.

Here in the North Carolina mountains, I have hundreds of black walnuts. And a few years ago they started dying of the Thousand Cankers.
I have lost a dozen big black walnuts in the past two years. Biologists don't know how bad it will be but could be 100 percent mortality.
Anybody need a nice gun stock, or dining room table?

And just a month ago, I found out that the Emerald Ash Borer is killing my ash trees. Hell I didn't know I even had any ash trees. But I have several that are dead. This damn bug was unknown in North America until 2002, when it first began killing ash trees in Wisconsin.
They are getting 100 percent mortality of ash trees in Wisconsin so it doesn't look good.

A hundred years ago my land would have been covered with chestnuts, and I have 48 acres. All mountain.
Auf wiedersehen to all of them. Now my brother and I are re introducing the chestnut trees, I have 6 trees but brother has 25 chestnut trees, he will harvest 10 pounds of chestnuts this year.

Mine have been succumbing to a mixture of Roundup and Crossbow.

Hard to imagine how many invasive species we would not have if we did a better job of policing foreign trade.

The USDA is far, far more concerned with making sure 80 million Dindu Nuffins get the food stamps and free school lunches.

I used to have one woods that was full of ash trees, now there are none. The emerald ash borer, another nonnative species got them. I guess that's the price we pay for "open borders."

Well, there is that......................



and the fact that American businesses in need of parts etc do not want their items held in quarantine (or inspected even ) for any length of time, much less for long enough for an invader to be detected.

Certain things could be held and subjected to high temps, but many would not survive the process. Other methods are likely too "expensive" and would eat into the profit margin they enjoy by importing supplies and parts.

And let's not forget the American consumer who wants all that Wally/Dollar General/Rite-Aid cheap stuff.

Globalism..................it's what's on the menu for the near future at least.

Geno

But, but, they can be replaced with Russian Olive............................

Exactly why we should import no products into the country from overseas.

I miss the sassafras from my youth back east. I've never seen the wood turned into anything I remember, but I dug a bunch of roots up to make tea, and chopped up a bunch doing what boys'll do in the woods.

Word to the wise...….....If you have ash trees and do NOT yet have the borer...……..timber the trees while they still have value. Once infected, they turn "punky" very rapidly and you've lost everything. When I saw it coming here, I logged a couple thousand bd/ft and had it turned into interior woodwork for a project I was doing on my house. At least in a couple decades, when I'm telling my grandkids of the trees we used to have called "ash", I can show them what the wood looks like.

And add a couple more to the list of Asian invasive destroyers...…….

Cytospora canker
Rhizosphaera needlecast

There won't be a Colorado Blue Spruce in the northeast within 10 years. We're Christmas tree farmers. First of this year...…...right after last ear's harvest………….we pushed out what WOULD have been thousands of dollars worth of harvestable trees for this season. Done. Junk. All needles dead but for the current year's growth. They'll only sustain THAT much for a couple years and then die. Drive around and look at what's going on with the CBS in residential landscapes...…….. The Asplundh guys are working non-stop at cutting and chipping the dying trees.

Yep

tell that to GM, Ford, Chrysler,

etc etc etc.

Geno

Spruce bud worm in Maine growing up was a bane to the logging industry.

My family property has been a mess due to a divorce and a problematic knothead for
5 years. I haven't been on it in that time, but, it's now settled.
We had some very nice Ash I had been thinking about cutting before this started,
sure it's junk now, all the Ash here is.

Damn shame.

I need to ride in there and look around,
don't have the heart to do it though.

I deer hunt on Fort Knox, KY, I have noticed over the past two years, that the forest guys have been going in and chopping out a chunk of bark on most of the younger sassafras trees in a few areas. Seems like they are trying to curb the sassafras trees from spreading too much.

I actually love to work with sassafras lumber for furniture. Easy to work with hand tools, sands/finishes nicely, and makes the shop smell like rootbeer.