Next year at college is 'Le Grande Project', about 10,000 words covering an area of interest to me. I'm choosing the value of biodiversity in trees within our countryside, mainly in hedgerows, field boundaries etc....
Having a scope around my local parish I found these poor buggers today, Wych Elms....they've suckered and sprouted everywhere along the hedge line and each one in turn is falling prey to Dutch Elm Disease. The patterns left by the bark beetle (larvae) are amazing to look at, intricate symmetrical weaving lines. The beetles emerge in spring from dead Elm and carry the Ophiostoma novo-ulmi fungus upon them, this takes hold when the beetle finds new young trees to feed upon, the fungus spreads throughout the trees and kills of branches or complete trunks.
Females lay eggs in dead patches of the tree, larvae burrow out, and the process begins again.
It's a big plan of mine to somehow be involved with research, surveying and development of a method to mitigate DED cases in the UK.
Some info: RHS Dutch Elm Disease advice
It's been two very long weeks but come Monday it's back to college for the final installment of year one...man, it's flown by!
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Cloning Plants Resistant to Dutch Elm Disease
Thanks to the plant cloning work of tree geneticist Alden Townsend, the prognosis for American elms is now good. In the late 1990s approximately twenty-five years of plant cloning work on American elms came to fruition when the announcement was made: Townsend had finished cloning two new strains of American elms. These plant clones are resistant to Dutch elm disease. Named Ulmus americana "Valley Forge" and Ulmus americana "New Harmony," Townsend's plant clones are now on the market. And the plant cloning work of tree geneticists continues, in hopes of developing new American elms that will be even more resistant to Dutch elm disease.
colin
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