The number of trees infected with sudden oak death in California is increasing, and the disease has reached epidemic levels along the coast, researchers say.
The oak-killing pathogen is firmly established in 14 counties - including Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Alameda - and the number of infected trees in these counties is escalating, University of California researchers reported Friday.
"Sudden oak death is occupying more and more areas within the coastal region," Matteo Garbelotto of the University of California-Berkeley said at a conference of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations in Monterey.
The disease has not significantly expanded its range, however, and does not appear to have spread into the Central Valley, Sierra Nevada or the Pacific Northwest, researchers said.
Dry weather, strict quarantines and other regulatory measures are believed to have hampered the pathogen's expansion into new regions.
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I began noticing in 2000, when I was living in coastal Orange County, that there was a rapidly spreading disease that was affecting the native Pacific Sycamore. I had several of these trees on my property and eventually the homeowners association landscapers started to remove them one by one as they died. There was no explanation put forth as to the cause of the disease.
Next to become "infected" were the imported Eucalyptus, which were the predominate tree in the low desert coastal regions due to their fast growth and low water needs. They really went fast.
Then the darling shrub of residential and freeway landscapers, the oleander began dying off in epidemic proportions. Again, the maintenance folk in my neighborhood began removing the dead plants from around the thick perimeter of vegetation that allowed some privacy at my home.
By the time I decided to get out of there, there was not much left of the traditional landscape plants. The desert was reclaiming the county.
To this day I can only speculate what was really happening. Since air pollution along the coast was minimal due to onshore airflow, I can only attribute it to the massive electromagnetic pollution that was prevalent from the forests of cell phone towers that were everywhere -to the powerful military radar and communication transmitters on every available hilltop and rise.
Something devastated the immune systems of the plants, leaving them susceptible to whatever parasites considered them hosts. It wasn't pretty and its implications for the future were clear.