One of my regular stops is a stand of beech trees just south of Stone Mountain. The trees are lovely. I tend to go on about beech trees.
Now when I look at them, I find myself looking for signs of beech-leaf disease. The first cases were reported in 2012 in Ohio. The disease, carried by a microscopic nematode, spread. It has reached North Carolina, a neighboring state. Foresters say it’s just a matter of time before it reaches here.
When I was a boy, I used to climb a magnificent chestnut on my grandmother’s place in Tennessee. It was the only chestnut that anyone knew about, and old timers would sometimes stop by, just to look. The chestnut was a prized tree. The nuts were tasty, and the wood was valued by furniture makers. In 1904, someone noticed that something was killing the chestnut trees at the zoo in New York City. By World War II, something like 9 million acres of chestnut trees were gone.
When I go to the beech stand by Stone Mountain, I still am struck by its beauty. But now a little worry has mixed with the wonder.
• Sources: “Beech leaf disease: An emerging forest threat in Eastern U.S.”; U.S. Forest Service, Sept. 15, 2023. It’s here:
Margaret Roach, “A Race to Save a Signature American Tree From a Deadly Disease”; The New York Times, Aug. 13, 2025. It’s here:
No comments:
Post a Comment