The First Report of Beech Bark Disease in Ohio Comes Nineteen Years After the First Report of the Initiating Scale

Plant Disease
M MacKenzie, A J Iskra

Abstract

Beech bark disease (BBD) is a two-part disease complex. It first requires the feeding of an initiating insect scale and is only fully developed when scale-altered bark becomes infected by one of two Neonectria species. In Ohio, there was a 19-year lag between discovery of the initiating scale insect and the development of BBD. In September 1984, the BBD-initiating scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga Lind) was discovered in the Holden Arboretum, Geauga County, OH (2). Nineteen years later (December 2003), A. Iskra discovered the exotic BBD-causing fungus, Neonectria coccinea (Pers.:Fr.) Rossman & Samuels var faginata Lohman, Watson & Ayers, on American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.) in the Holden Arboretum. In 1934, Erlich (1) reported that there was normally a delay of at least 1 year between the appearance of the scale and the first appearance of the Neonectria spp. fungus. In the years immediately after the first report of the scale in Ohio (2), pathologists and arboretum staff made frequent visits to the site in an attempt to find Neonectria spp. fruiting. After a decade of searching, these visits became more infrequent. However, it was on one of these visits that A. Iskra found the fungus. He found it on only four trees, none of ...Continue Reading

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