We often don’t think of our trees as getting “sick,” but just as people can contract diseases, trees can too. Some of these diseases have been present for centuries and some are relatively new, or sometimes new to a geographic region. Just as new illnesses are discovered that impact people, new tree diseases also occur and only through study and research do we learn more about the origins of the disease, its impact on plants and potential treatments.
One such recent example is beech leaf disease (BLD). This is an emerging disease of American and European beech that was first observed in Lake County, Ohio (Cleveland area) in 2012. Since it was detected, the disease has been observed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Ontario, Canada.