Ash Dieback

[custard]

I appreciate that over millenia trees have been subject to terrible diseases that can target an individual species almost to the point of extinction. But to have two such epidemics in one person's lifetime, Dutch Elm Disease and now Chalara Ash Dieback, is surely evidence that something is seriously wrong?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/e ... iples.html

We don't have that many different types of tree in this country, so to see two staples like ash and elm taken out of the British furniture maker's lexicon is just tragic.

I can remember the glut of elm in the 70's and 80's as almost all the elm trees were felled, there was so much in almost every timber yard that is seemed the supply would be inexhaustible, and I used to make windsor chairs with absolutely no thought that the supply would one day finish. I've still got a few very wide 3" thick British elm boards salted away, enough for maybe 8 or 10 windsor chair seats saddled from a single board the way they should be made. I had planned on one day completing them with yew, but it might be more fitting now to mate them with British ash legs and backs.

So sad to think that when they're gone they really will be gone.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

And Phytophthora ramorum in oaks. There's one in Italy that's killed 70,000 hectares of olives as well.

 

[lurker]

The something seriously wrong is the unrestricted import export of tree plants
Whilst we have a race to the bottom for cheapest price the cost is some cowboy some where cutting corners selling diseased plants in this instance.

It permutates everything these days, no one cares about quality

 

[sdjp]

I can remember the glut of elm in the 70's and 80's as almost all the elm trees were felled, there was so much in almost every timber yard that is seemed the supply would be inexhaustible, and I used to make windsor chairs with absolutely no thought that the supply would one day finish. I've still got a few very wide 3" thick British elm boards salted away, enough for maybe 8 or 10 windsor chair seats saddled from a single board the way they should be made. I had planned on one day completing them with yew, but it might be more fitting now to mate them with British ash legs and backs.

So sad to think that when they're gone they really will be gone.

I'm seeing plenty of british elm around - indeed, some very nice elm came my way as firewood recently, which is a sign that it wasn't deemed worth milling it. From what I've seen, it could have made some nice 1 inch thick, 6 inch wide boards, unexceptional grain, although the usual interlocked formations for elm.

In other words, whatever problem there was with elm supply, there's enough 'post DED' trees coming through now. Granted, they wont' be the same very wide boards from really old trees, but it's not a wood that is impossible to get. I think there's still a bit of a price premium attached to it for rarity - priced around the same as english walnut or london plane in places, down to brown oak in others. I don't know where it used to be, before my time, so I'm just guessing that's a premium (by the wood itself, I'd have figured more in the ash / oak / lime price range)

Perhaps being in Scotland affects that - much more of the trees are softwood, so the hardwood stuff is less farmed, more left to their own devices; hence less factors to cause problems to spread? This line of thinking makes me wonder if some of this 'new' elm _isn't_ resistant to DED, but just never got exposed.

So I don't think that we need to eulogise elm just yet; and hopefully the ash dieback won't turn out to be as widespread as DED. If it does, then there's reasonable hope that enough turn out to be resistant enough to carry the growing stock through.

Thinking long term, I'm more worried about R. ponticum than ash dieback.

 

[matthewwh]

I'm still flummoxed as to what we were doing importing ash saplings - anyone who has an ash tree within 100 yards of their garden will testify to how readily the keys germinate.

Apparently there is a ready supply of wide board English Elm in Australia that was planted by the early settlers, with the way the trees reacted to the Aussie climate the figure is exceptional.