The Emerald Ash Borer plague

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The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Sat Aug 20, 2016 12:22 am

I still haven't seen one of these bugs, so I'm unsure of their exact size, but apparently they look a bit like a short lengthed grasshopper, and are a bright green colour.

But I am not unsure of what this accidental import from Asia has done to our Ash trees. They've killed them off. There is a treatment that can be applied, but it is very expensive so most people have just let their trees die. Our town is taking care of the Ash trees on the local boulevards, so the species won't be gone completely. But the Ash tree used to be a very common tree here.
We were warned about 10 years ago that the Ash Borer had arrived in our area. And now every day for the last 3 years or more you hear chain saws going and tree branches being put through a giant wood chipper somewhere in the neighbourhood or just next door to us. One day last month I saw about six trucks each pulling a wood chipper and all of them were from the same company, moving in a convoy through the downtown main drag. People are getting rich from this natural disaster.
There was some mention someplace that once the Emerald Ash Borer moves through the area and goes on to the next, the Ash trees might be able to make a come back. I'm not holding my breath. I'll bet they just turn around and head back once they run out of trees. Or they'll attack a less desireable species.

In the last 100 years we in this part of North America have lost three species of trees. We lost the sweet chestnut to a blight in the 1930's. We lost most of our Elm trees to the Dutch Elm disease in the early '60's. I watched that one march through here when I was a kid. And now this new blight. Bah!! :roll:

One good thing, the Ash trees make a lot of seeds. So did the Elms. Every once in a while a very old seed from an Elm germinates and you get a young elm tree. Sadly they don't usually get very large before they're infected and die.
A seed from an Ash tree has germinated in my flower bed in the front yard. I am planning to leave it there for two years and then transplant it onto the boulevard beside my house. Some day it will make nice summer shade for the north wall of my place. And hopefully the town will take care of the tree, as it will be on the boulevard. :)
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Hermskii » Sat Aug 20, 2016 11:24 am

Got a picture of a big healthy one of these trees?
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Sat Aug 20, 2016 2:51 pm

Here is a web page with a clickable photo of a young Ash tree:

https://www.invasiveinsects.ca/eab/ashID_h.html

Here is an article from the Hamilton Spectator that has a 2 photo slide show of a large Ash tree stump being cut away. You can see from the stump how large these trees can get.

http://www.thespec.com/news-story/68159 ... g-species/

And from this web page you can see what the damned green beetles are doing to our trees:

https://www.london.ca/residents/Propert ... nguide.pdf

Here is a Wikipedia article that discusses the problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer

I see from the map that Texas is being invaded too. It is really depressing to walk past a park or other greenspace that once had a lot of beautiful trees in it, only to see that it is either rather empty now, or full of huge dead trees. :(
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Hermskii » Sun Aug 21, 2016 2:55 pm

Great research there.

I am one of these people who as a kid knew everything about animals and bugs in Texas. I'm glad to say I have never seen one of these damned beetles. I have or had what was a trash tree in my back yard called an Arizona Ash tree. It made it about 35 years before it got sick or weak enough to get infested with big Oak stag beetles. Here is a image and note a full grown one is about as big as a pinky finger:

https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/phot ... -large.jpg

They bore holes as wide as your pinky finger all through the tree until it looks like swiss cheeze and dies. All you see on the outside are a few holes. Under the bark these tunnels go all up and down through the tree. Sad. Hate these things and could not stop them.
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Tue Aug 30, 2016 11:55 pm

I took some photographs of dead, dying and still healthy Ash trees earlier today. Here are three dead Ash trees. The healthy tree is an Oak.
2016 001b.jpg
Here is an untreated and dying Ash tree.
2016 006b.jpg
Here is a snapshot of two trees that are on the town side of a property line, so they have been treated with a substance called "Tree Anzin". I think I have the name of the product correct. It is very expensive, so most people are letting their trees die, and saving money by only paying once when it is time to cut the tree down. Those who leave the dead trees standing will find a bill in the mail after the town has come onto their property and cut it down for them. These two trees in this row are the lucky ones. The others not on the town side will eventually die. The green dot indicates that the town has taken on the tree's treatment.
2016 004b.jpg
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Wed Aug 31, 2016 12:00 am

I couldn't get this last photo into the set above, so here it is, along with the rest of the story:

Here is a row of Ash trees that appear to be healthy. You can't see it here, but the tree on the left of the row belongs to the property owner and has been left untreated. If you could see, you would see some dead or dying branches, the first sign that the tree is under attack by the Emerald Ash Borer. Similarly, the group of 3 trees on the right side of the row and behind the hedge are well inside the property line. One is just starting to show that it is in trouble. Look up at the branches at the top that only have a few leaves on them. Eventually only the trees in the middle of the group will be left, as they are the ones that are being treated by the town.
2016 005b.jpg
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:53 pm

A quick update on the photos:

The 3 dead trees beside the healthy oak were cut down last year. So only the oak remains.

The untreated tree standing by itself is gone too.

I'll have to go and have a look at the row of trees in the 3rd picture to see which are now dead and gone, if any.

A lone tree farther up the street that the town used to treat has now started to die, so it must have been overlooked. :roll: And one on the corner of a large lot is dead at the top, and a danger to passers by. The lot's owner hasn't done anything about it, and neither has the town. :roll: :evil:

You no longer frequently hear the chainsaws around here any more, but that one company that has made a fortune cutting down Ash trees was back in the neighbourhood yesterday.
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Terraniux » Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:55 pm

the Dutch Elm disease
???

As far as I know, we are one of few countries that have 4/10 people that are experts on nature / gardeners.
I'm curous to hear. You sure it is us? Because UK is to blame first, thanks to their polluted skies and roads.

such a beautiful tree though.

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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Hermskii » Fri Mar 16, 2018 10:28 am

Are you sure this isn't from the Ice age the liberals said was going to happen back in the 70's?
Are you sure this isn't from the acid rain the liberals said was going to happen back in the 80's?
Are you sure this isn't from the ozone depletion the liberals said was going to happen in the back in the 90's?
Are you sure this isn't from the global warming the liberals said was going to happen in the back in 2000 -2010?
Are you sure it isn't from what the liberals had to rename global warming to (being climate change) this decade?

Maybe it is this awful disease like you mentioned. Didn't you say one of the trees was treated and survived? Why again don't they treat them all and how is this Bushes fault?

Sorry. I had to say all of that because it came to me so quickly. 50 years of fear mongering cracks me up.

The only thing I can say I see different where I live is the pollen get's worse every year but then every year the Houston area gets more and more greenery all over it.
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:34 pm

The Dutch Elm Disease refers to a ship load of elm wood planks that Holland exported to Boston USA around 1946. Sadly, bugs that were infected with the virus came along for a ride in the wood, then spread to the area surrounding Boston, USA. The elm trees of Europe evolved with the virus, and are resistant to it. But the elms here in North America are not. The bugs carrying the virus spread across the whole continent, and by the early '60's reached my neighbourhood. I remember watching trees die in the property across the road, then the next year our elm trees died and had to be cut down too. A year later our next door neighbours lost their elm trees too, and so on through the whole town and beyond. When I was in school I saw a map that showed the spread of the disease radiating out of the Boston area, and lines with the year the infection got to a certain distance away from Boston were drawn on the map.
Every once in a while a very old elm seed that somehow survived the decades in the ground germinates, but the tree seldom lives past the size of a 4" / 10cm trunk. They catch the disease and die. I've had it happen in my own backyard twice. I cut the top off of the last elm tree to die and left the trunk standing. I use it to hold up an extension cord that I have run out to my garage.

The emerald ash borer plague came from china, and in this case is caused by a grasshopper look alike small bug that is emerald green in colour. The bugs bore into the trees under the bark, and disrupt the flow of it's sap, eventually killing the tree. When that happens they move on to the next tree. They're all over the continent by now. And most of the Ash trees are dead.

Yes Hermskii, this problem is NOT caused by global warming. Instead it has been caused by global trade. :P
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Hook » Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:03 am

Hermskii wrote:Are you sure this isn't from the Ice age the liberals said was going to happen back in the 70's?
Are you sure this isn't from the acid rain the liberals said was going to happen back in the 80's?
Are you sure this isn't from the ozone depletion the liberals said was going to happen in the back in the 90's?
Are you sure this isn't from the global warming the liberals said was going to happen in the back in 2000 -2010?
Are you sure it isn't from what the liberals had to rename global warming to (being climate change) this decade?
LOL Maybe replace the word "liberals" with "scientists" !?!?! :P ...

Are you sure this isn't from the Ice age the scientists said was going to happen back in the 70's?
Are you sure this isn't from the acid rain the scientists said was going to happen back in the 80's?
Are you sure this isn't from the ozone depletion the scientists said was going to happen in the back in the 90's?
Are you sure this isn't from the global warming the scientists said was going to happen in the back in 2000 -2010?
Are you sure it isn't from what the scientists had to rename global warming to (being climate change) this decade?

PS: Never heard about the "Ice age" one ??? :shock:
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:06 pm

There was hogwash talk about a "global cooling cycle" back in the '70's. But I recently learned from a very reliable source (either PBS or the CBC) that all talk was deliberate poppycock put out by the petroleum industry in order to obfuscate the warnings about the planet heating up, which was already being detected back then.

It's all of the same sort of smoke and mirrors and outright lies that industry groups put out. Remember how the tobacco industry was making claims that cigarettes were actually good for people? :roll: :x

And more lately, how it turns out the sugar industry has been telling us that fats were what was bad for us, when all along it was really all of the sugar that was being dumped into our food stuffs that is the real cause of obesity?!! :x

Getting back to the thread's topic area:

I watched a very interesting program about trees last night on TV Ontario. I learned that trees give off aerosols that are good for our immune system, and that these aerosols also have a calming effect on the brain. So now you know why you feel so much better after you go for a walk in the forest!

The video also mentioned the importance of forests and the tree canopy in general, and why it's important to protect them.
The time spent watching the video is well spent, and I recommend it. So here is the link:

https://tvo.org/video/documentaries/cal ... m-of-trees
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Terraniux » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:02 pm

Thanks for explaining, all of it, NE. :D

Yeah, call me a pointy shiny head, but I had these feelings too. Bills will be paid, wether by blood or by money :? .



The video:



This video is restricted from playing in your current geographic region
Error Code: PLAYER_ERR_GEO_RESTRICTED

Any other links ? Thanks. 8)

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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by a nameless entity » Tue Apr 17, 2018 2:58 pm

It's available on YouTube m8. :)



If this doesn't work for you, the title of the movie is Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees

Perhaps you can search it out on You Tube in your country and see it there, or elsewhere on the web, hopefully. :)
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Re: The Emerald Ash Borer plague

Post by Hook » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:05 pm

Good Job with this people! :wink:
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