Summertime...And Flowers Are Boooming

Emerson says: The Earth laughs in flowers.  Springtime, though, is when we tend to think of such mirth.   Summer is now our season, yet floral beauty continues to reign. Following are five of the boys and girls of summer.

 

 

  Above is the spectacular and aromatic flower of Stewartia, a member of the camellia family (Theaceae), photographed at Secrest Arboretum where Joe Cochran, Paul Snyder, Matt Shultzman, and the legacy of Kenny Cochran, hanuve resulted in numerous stewartias planted in recent years.

 

 

  Next, is...

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Jim Chatfield

Squirrels Debarking Trees: Part 2

Thanks to Tim Turner who is truly an alert BYGL Alert! reader, I can provide some new information on the “Calcium Hypothesis.” In my BYGL Alert! posted this morning, I cited a scientific paper published in 2016 that proposed squirrels are stripping bark to acquire calcium from the phloem tissue. The authors of the paper tagged this explanation for bark-stripping as the “Calcium Hypothesis.”
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Joe Boggs

Oak Leaf Blister Disease

  Oak leaf blister, a fungal disease caused by Taphrina caerulescens, is widespread this year on a range of oak species, both in the white oak and red oak groups. Symptoms include raised, blistered, greenish-yellow spots on upper leaf surfaces and darker, corresponding sunken spots on lower leaf surfaces, though sometimes the raised and sunken aspects may be obscured. Fungal growth can sometimes be seen on undersurfaces of leaves.

 

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Jim Chatfield

Squirrels Debarking Trees

Over the weekend, I received an e-mail message from a landowner in southwest Ohio asking what could be stripping bark from the branches of a large thornless honeylocust on their property. Their pictures showed that long slivers of bark were being removed from branches that were clearly much too high to be within reach of other possible bark strippers such as deer.
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Joe Boggs

Observations: Socrates, Poison Hemlock, Fennel Aphids, and Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum, family Apiaceae) is one of the deadliest plants in North America. This non-native invasive weed contains highly toxic piperidine alkaloid compounds, including coniine and gamma-coniceine, which cause respiratory failure and death when ingested by mammals. So, how can fennel aphids survive sucking juices from the plant that killed Socrates and how can lady beetles survive eating the aphids?
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Joe Boggs

Sycamore Anthracnose Symptoms Fade

  This morning I got a message from Frank Leon, horticulturist with Barnes Nursery, complete with the above image showing the thinning of sycamore (American planetree; Platanus occidentalis), a common sight seen in northwest Ohio this Spring. The problem is sycamore anthracnose, caused by the fungus Apiognomonia veneta.

 

 

  This particular anthracnose fungus occurs on planetrees, including our native sycamore, but less so on Platanus orientalis and the hybrid between these two planetrees, Londone planetree (PlatanusX acerifolia...

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Jim Chatfield

Slug Sawfly on American Bladdernut

In 2015, I reported that I had found sawfly larvae skeletonizing American bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia) leaves in southwest Ohio (see BYGL Bug Bytes, September 3, 2015, “Scarlet Oak Sawfly on Bladdernut?”). The title of that report was based on the appearance of the larvae: they were the spitting image of Scarlet Oak Sawfly (Caliroa quercuscoccineae) which is sometimes called the scarlet oak slug sawfly or just oak slug sawfly.
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Joe Boggs

Elongate Hemlock Scale Alert

I revisited a Cilician fir (Abies cilicica) earlier this week in southwest Ohio that I found to be heavily infested with Elongate Hemlock Scale (EHS) (Fiorinia externa) in 2010. I’ve been monitoring this tree since that time and have watched the scale population rise and fall then rise again; the tree has never been treated.
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Joe Boggs

Why Trees Matter Forum; October 18

Trees matter in many ways; just ask the Ents. Their beauty and grace is wondrous, they are proven healers for hospital patients, their social importance as historical references is well-known, from Johnny Appleseed to the Signal Tree in Summit County, and their environmental services, well…

 

  Check out treebenefits.com and itreetools.org for itemization of the economic benefits of the environmental services of trees: Storm water remediation, energy savings, air quality improvement, carbon effects, property values.

 

  With that in mind, in past years we...

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Jim Chatfield