Will there be Oak trees in the US in 20 years? Let's find out!
For any homeowner chapos in the northeast, DO NOT PRUNE YOUR OAKS UNLESS IT’S FREEZING OUTSIDE and has been for a couple weeks ideally. The pathogen is often transmitted by an insect that cannot feed through oak bark. But if living wood is exposed (by pruning or a storm or whatever) the insect can feed and potentially transmit the fungus.
Once an oak is infected, it can share the infection through its root network: when roots touch, they often “graft” together. The roots of oaks in a forest form a giant network that share nutrients and information with each other, and indeed the fungus as well. This, coupled with climate change shortening the freezing season, does make me quite nervous for the future of the oak tree. We also have Sudden Oak Death Syndrome to worry about. The northeast US used to be full of ashes and, even longer ago, chestnuts, but their populations have been dramatically reduced by insects (emerald ash borer) and bacteria (chestnut blight); in the case of chestnuts, they’re essentially extinct in the northeast as of several decades ago. Maybe we just have to hope that the insect extinction will slow the spread.
Oak wilt itself is also pretty interesting.
Basically, the fungus itself doesn’t kill the tree, rather the tree’s overreaction to detecting the fungus in its vascular system (similar to how humans experience allergies; the allergens themselves usually don’t cause too much trouble, but people with allergies’ bodies overreact to their presence). So the tree shuts down its vascular system, killing itself.
This happens extremely quickly for the red oak family—I’ve seen trees turn stone dead maybe a month after showing symptoms—while white oaks can take several seasons to die.
If you’ve got a pesticide license, you can make a pretty penny doing fungicide injections to help prevent oak wilt (it takes 30 minutes to do with the right equipment and you can charge like $200-300 depending on the size of the tree).
Do you know how I'd get in on that? I have a pesticide applicator's license and live in an affected state.
I used to do it for my job at a big tree company. So I know the gear and technique, but I’ve never tried to do it freelance. I’m not sure how regulatory compliance works; we kept notes on the weather when we did these things, but I never had to do more than just record stuff like temp, wind velocity, etc. I also don’t know how hard it’d be to find trees to treat.
The product you need is Propiconazole 14.3, the same active ingredient used for most leaf diseases. AFAIK you need a pesticide applicator’s license to buy it, at least in concentrated/bulk forms. It comes in two forms: a form specifically for injections that runs around $80 a liter (and a liter treats 100 DBH inches, so it’s less than a dollar in materials per inch, and you’ll probably charge at least $10/inch. Most trees are in the 20-35 inch range, but you can find some massive oaks and elms here and there). The name-brand version is called Tree-äge. I talked to the science people at my company and they said we could dilute the form designed for spraying, which is even cheaper.
The hardware is the expensive investment. We used this “Q connect kit” from rainbow tree, I’ve heard it’s around $1000 but the company often said equipment was more expensive than it actually was. You’ll also need a cordless drill, and a bike pump to pressurize the system. There are other systems that I assume are cheaper (one you literally use weird syringes and hulk grip strength to inject the stuff. I imagine it’s cheaper but it takes much longer, like 3hr/tree, and is a pain in the ass). The tubing provided is good for a little more than 40 inch DBH, but some trees have gigantic root flares compared to their DBH (diameter at breast height), so even some 35-in trees will push the kit to its limit.
Other tree pests that can be treated with injections are Dutch Elm Disease (exact same fungicide) and Emerald Ash Borer (the pesticide Emamectin Benzoate, name brand is Arbotect).
I can go into more specifics, but I figure I dumped enough info for round 2. Plus the equipment price tag is gonna be prohibitive for a lot of people. But I’m happy to answer more questions if you’re still interested
So if it costs like $7000 to save a mature oak tree, they're pretty much gone right
It’s probably not clear (which is my fault, sorry) but these things are priced based on the diameter of the tree, because that’s what determines how much product/treatment time is necessary. Extremely large oaks might be 70 or 80 inches, but they’re very few and far between near me. Bigger oaks are 40-50 inches, generally, but most aren’t bigger than 32 inches.
I personally would only recommend the injection to a normal person if it’s been pruned at the wrong time of year (not sure how it works in areas where you don’t get freezing temps), or if there’s an infected oak close enough that the roots may have grafted. A super rich person, on the other hand... whatever.
But yeah, it’s definitely not cheap. It’s just not that astronomical. However, the product only last 2-3 years. So if there’s still a high risk of oak wilt, another treatment would be recommended.
Ah okay I see where I was confused, I googled DBH and assumed the height referred to the height of the tree.
So really, we're talking about a cost of $300 to vaccinate a single tree for about 3 years. Which still, I think indicates they're fucked right?
It’s certainly not feasible to hit all the trees this way, absolutely not. And while there have been projects moderately successful at eradicating insect problems, I don’t really know of any for funguses (not saying they don’t exist, I just haven’t heard of them).
But most trees species have some kind of systemic pest problem, yet here they are. Every so often we lose the vast majority of a given species in a given area, though, so it’s really hard to say at this point whether oaks are gonna go the way of the chestnut, or whether they’re just having a couple extra problems at the moment.
Definitely! I really appreciate the thoughtful comment. I did some more reading on regulations in my state, and it turns out the licensure process to be able to buy herbicide for yourself/your own business (versus as the agent of a licensed business) is substantially more strenuous than I thought so it would be prohibitive to try and do this as a side hustle. Reading more into Oak Wilt was kind of depresso since my crew has been doing a lot of burn line maintenance to get ready for the prescribed fire season and I just realized we've left about a dozen gorgeous, centuries old oaks susceptible through poor pruning practices. Would you mind if I DM'd you about your work in forestry generally? I'm trying to work my way into the research side of things from doing conservation labor, but doing the tree service/arborist/urban forester work it sounds like you're doing is my fallback and I'm eager to hear your perspective. Sorry for the word salad, I'm not a great writer.
How the fuck are people supposed to get from 15 to 30 woodcutting without oak? Not to mention fletching and firemaking too! This is such bullshit
Doing a grad school about something like this. Just wait till phytophtera ramorum gets to the east coast in force
Goddammit. The gold standard for fungiculture substrates is oak. It's so dense that it will sustain a colony for 5+ years. Even when I use other hardwood sawdusts it's in a mixture with oak.
Oh no. I have three questions:
- does the wilt affect q. garryana?
- Is this actually a major species culling event on the scale of say the white pine blister rust of the 1970s, or will it be more selective?
- Are there implications for the whiskey industry?
All good questions. Not sure, seems specific to oak trees and probably nothing good.
