To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] monoculture
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:13:16 -0600
At 09:41 PM 10/29/2003 +0000, Tanis wrote:
But don't all the horrors listed in this posting happen in this country
too ?
Sure they do, and it's not just with fruiting/edible plants.
For the last few years, here in my little town, I've been noticing a
burgeoning epidemic consisting of a double-whammy of bacterial leaf scorch
and heavy infestation of gouty & horny stem/branch galls on pin oaks that
are fairly quickly taking out large number of these trees in street &
residential plantings.
Pin oak(Q.palustris) is a nurseryman's dream - easy to grow from readily
available acorns, grows & calipers rapidly, transplants readily as a fairly
large specimen, and has consumer recognition. But, when EVERYONE plants
one in the yard, and the cities use them almost exclusively as their street
tree selection, they've set the stage for virtually unhindered spread of
one or more potential pathogens throughout the population.