A sick oak
Humongous fungus fear as trees die in B’klyn
A TREE may not be growing in Brooklyn, where a killer fungus is on the attack.
Scientists have found 30 trees in the city — nearly all of them in Brooklyn — that have been infected by oak wilt, a fungus that is believed to be spread primarily by beetles.
“It’s a devastating one,” said Karen Snover-Clift, a plant disease specialist at Cornell University, which is partnering with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the city Parks Department to combat the deadly disease.
“Once a tree is infected, the best we can do is try to prevent it from being spread,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s a death sentence for that tree.”
Oak wilt has been a plague since the 1940s, but it didn’t pop up in New York State until 2008, according to researchers. Even then, the threat was confined to Schenectady County.
But last year the fungus spread to Brooklyn, Long Island and Canandaigua, Snover-Clift said. Two trees in Queens have also been spotted with the disease.
The fungus, whose scientific name is Ceratocystis fagacearum, constricts the flow of water through a tree, causing leaves to wilt. An infected tree can die in as few as three weeks.
The pathogen spreads during the warm months between April and November. The only way to combat the disease is to cut down infected trees and aggressively monitor healthy ones.
Green-Wood Cemetery, home to 600 oak trees, is one leafy oasis Snover-Clift and her band of arborists are vigilantly watching.
Last week she was at the cemetery in Greenwood collecting specimens of trees that the fungus had infected for lab analysis.
The Cornell scientist chiseled a piece of bark from the stump of a mighty oak that the fungus had killed. The tree was lopped down last year after the team of arborists gave it the grim diagnosis.
Snover-Clift said the tree showed a telltale sign of the disease — dark streaks on its bark. Other possible signs of an infected tree are uneven brown splotches on leaves.
The plant disease specialist said Parks Department workers play a crucial role in keeping tabs on the trees for any signs of abnormalities.
“In the plant world, they’re our first responders,” she said.
Andrew Ulman, the Parks Department’s director of forestry, agreed, saying preserving oak trees from the fungal threat is imperative.
“Trees are really part of the infrastructure as well,” he said. “When you think about all the things they provide, from cleaning the air to homes for animals to reducing stormwater runoff, they’re an essential component.”