NOT since Dutch elm disease struck in the 1970s have forestry scientists in the UK been so worried. The tree disease “sudden oak death” has arrived from the US and has infected four species.
SOD is caused by the fungus-like alga Phytophthora ramorum, and has been devastating California’s oaks since the mid-1990s. The alga, which thrives in rhododendron and viburnum plants, was spotted last month in southern England infecting a 100-year-old oak tree of American origin. Now it has been found in Cornwall, in the south-west, where it has been confirmed in a horse chestnut, a beech and a holm…
