RESIDENT EVIL!
Not A Movie - Not A Joke
There are some very serious problems affecting our community’s appearance, primary among them are Live Oak Decline and Web Worms. We have gathered information on these topics and we hope that you will use it to help plan a strategy if either of these problems affect your property.
Our community’s trees are valuable to us all. Their lovely canopies attract home buyers, adding market value to everyone’s properties. Your fully grown trees are the main part of your home’s curb appeal. But we must all do more to preserve them!
Fall Web Worms – Don’t Ignore Them!
This worm is causing a nightmare of webs and tangles throughout our community. It is in its third stage and this is the most destructive of the stages this pest goes through in our area. Yes, it is true that we had a lot of rain and that assisted the pest. But it is also true that we have not been doing our part as property owners, and that needs to change in order to curb the population of Webworms! In some places, it has been allowed to become so severe that webs have grown over entire tree trunks. That means there are an incredible amount of eggs waiting to hatch allowing the pest to travel to neighboring untouched trees in the next season!
THIS IS A CALL FOR COMMUNITY ACTION!
How Can You Prevent The Spread?
If you have web worms in your trees, don’t ignore them! Take action!
- Cut out the branch(es) with the webs on them. Then burn the branch(es). This disrupts their cycle and lessens the number of worms that will appear next year. Pruning tips.
- If the web problem has become too wide-spread in your trees to just cut the branches off,
- use a stick or high pressure hose to break open the web and expose the worms to predators
- or, after opening the web, spray it with an insecticide proven against Webworms
- If your neighbor’s trees have webworms, point them out! Tell them that these pests spread quickly and can strip a lot of foliage from a tree in one season, weakening the tree’s defenses against diseases and other pests in the future!
- Webworms affect 88 different species of trees and shrubs in Texas, so don’t be lulled into a false sense of security because you don’t have a tree like the one down the block covered in webbing. Look for them and when you find them, cut, treat, or do both!
- For a list of insecticides to use if your trees are beyond pruning go here (PDF).
We urge you to become informed by visiting the NASWC website on tree care and also reading more on how to rid your trees – OUR trees - of Webworms.
Live Oak Decline – Oak Wilt
This major disease threat to live and red oak trees is spreading. In red oaks (Texas, Schumard, Blackjack) a healthy tree will show fall-like colors in late spring or early fall and then swiftly die. The Live Oak usually dies slower (2 months to two years after showing initial symptoms), but it is an agonizing time for the tree's owner because once symptoms are evident there is nothing to do to save the tree.
Watch for the characteristic veinal necrosis on leaves from infected live oaks. The area on the veins is red, brown, or yellow and the area in between is green. See pictures of oak wilt leaves (PDF).
Oak wilt can be prevented but it is difficult to treat. Because the disease travels through the interconnected roots of live oaks at 100 feet per year once the infection is in a neighborhood, trenching has to be done to form a break between the tree roots of infected trees and other healthy trees.
Individual trees can be protected with the chemical Alamo injected by someone who is trained to apply the chemical, but it is also expensive (approximately $30 per inch of diameter). Alamo protects a healthy tree from infection but it does not stop the spread of the disease or cure an already infected tree. See www.naswc.org for pictures of treatment process.
THIS IS A CALL FOR COMMUNITY ACTION
How Can You Prevent The Spread?
- Paint all wounds on live oaks and red oaks immediately. This includes all wounds like cutting, pruning (pruning tips here), or an accidental bump from a weed-eater or lawnmower. All injured limbs, trunks, and roots are the areas susceptible to infection. Sap beetles carry the disease spores from an infected red oak to the wound on a healthy live or red oak. Paint will stop this but every minute you wait after the wound occurs, that increases the chance of infection. The first two days are the most critical. So get some pruning paint and use it regularly.
- There are no longer ANY SAFE WINDOWS OF WEATHER – like hot or cold periods - TO PRUNE OR CUT. Central Texas weather is too unpredictable and changeable – immediately paint every wound all year long.
- Do not buy firewood from sources that can not guarantee the health of the tree that was cut. Oak firewood can be a source of the infection. As some neighbors have painfully seen, we also need to protect our community by better managing firewood to avoid infection.
URBAN LEGEND SPOILER: Smoke from infected wood burning is not a threat! It is not true that must reduce the use of the fireplace in order to stop the spread of oak wilt. The fungus is destroyed by heat and will not survive in dry firewood. The actual problem is stockpiling that wood. Read on ...
- Do not buy or bring cut wood into the community that was trimmed from infected trees or are the remains of trees that died of the disease, all the while believing that you will burn it quick enough to avoid infecting healthy trees. You won’t. Yes, there is a way to “cure” stockpiled wood safely. (See our online information and the plant pathology link given below.) But will you do it? Immediately? Can you guarantee that you will keep the wood completely covered, properly, for an entire year before touching it? It takes very little time for beetles to find the fresh cut wood. And once he does, he will pick up the spores and take it to other trees in your yard and in your neighbors’ yards. Why take chances?
- If you have trees or bushes that, are dead or dying, covered in lichen, obviously diseased, or being consummed by pests, please take care of the problem by trimming, treating, or removing the tree depending on the affliction. Finding an experienced arborist or a good landscape company to remove diseased trees or treat those you have can be done by asking your neighbors. If you know of someone you would like to recommend, please email info@naswc.org. We will add it to our upcoming neighbor resource page!
See this site for more information about preventing Oak Wilt Decline
Click here for tree diseases and replacement tree list that is not affected by Oak Decline.
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