THE SILENT TREE KILLER

What is oak wilt, how does it spread and what to do if your trees fall victim

They say that Columbus is the city of live oaks and live folks, but how do you keep those trees alive with a deadly disease just around the corner?

Oak wilt is a fatal and fast spreading fungal disease that affects all types of oak trees around the world, with over 600 species of oak trees spread across the U.S.

According to an article posted on elitetreecare. com, the disease “affects the vascular system of the tree, preventing the proper flow of water and nutrients, eventually killing it.”

Although both types of trees would succumb to the same fate, red oaks and white oaks differ in the ways oak wilt affect them. Red oaks are more susceptible to the disease and will often die soon after infection, while white oaks tend to “develop symptoms more slowly and often recover.”

Trish Priest, A Better Columbus board member and local resident, has been upkeeping the oak trees at the property she has lived at for the past four years but has dealt with the deadly fungus within the area for over 25 years, emphasizing how the disease is very prevalent.

“Out in the area by the KC Hall west of Columbus heading to Weimar,” said Priest. “The disease is very prevalent.”

Priest says ever since she first became informed about the disease, she has been trying to find any way of saving the trees once infected and wants people within Columbus to be aware of just how dangerous the disease is to their trees.

“We’re the city of live oaks and live folks,” said Priest. “I started doing research on how to treat everything. We started treating our own trees. Once we got started, we had so many oak trees to work on, about 40 oak trees solely in my yard because we have about 10 acres. I don’t think people understand the dangers of it.”

Priest and her husband first began treating the trees with conventional methods using injection systems for the tree’s root systems. The method was very time consuming and expensive to routinely maintain, pushing Priest to search for alternative ways of treating the trees that were most efficient and cost friendly.

After losing a singular tree to the disease that was diagnosed too little too late and unable to afford the cost of conventional treatment, the couple went over to M-G Farm Services Center and started using fungicides that weren’t normally labeled for oak wilt treatment, beginning to have tremendous success.

It was then Priest says that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Citizen at the time, five to 10 years ago, wanting to spread the word and warn people about the dangerous tree fungus.

“I just wanted the word to get out,” said Priest. “Because I knew if this ever got into town, it would be chaos. People around there have trees that are connected, and that’s how the oak wilt spreads, because the roots interconnect.”

Priest says she continued to look for better and more cost-effective ways of treating the trees after she noticed some of the trees on her property and within town were starting to thin out. That is when she stumbled upon Dave Speed, a man who had come up with his own method of treating oak wilt while doing research online.

“Last year, I started noticing some of the trees were starting to thin a little bit,” said Priest. “I found this man that lives in Austin who came up with an alternative treatment for oak wilt besides doing the liquid injection. I learned about him online; he had come up with another type of fungicide and I wanted to give it a shot.”

Overtime, Speed’s methods began to drastically improve the condition of Priest’s trees which according to Speed, involved the use of natural microorganisms introduced to the tree alongside providing the tree and root system with an abundance of water.

“We have microorganisms that remove the food source for the oak wilt, and then we have a compost that we put down there that also has a lot of good bacteria, fungus, trace elements and minerals, along with a bunch of these microorganisms, they help the health and the immune system of the tree. You remove the food source, get the tree healthier, build up their immune system and they do really well. They need plenty of water as well, if you don’t have enough water to get the product to the roots, the treatment won’t work.”

Speed says oak wilt can jump from root system to root system as easily as “swapping spit” due to the roots grabbing together from tree to tree. The disease can also be spread through beetles who eat the fungus and spread them from tree to tree due to the attractiveness of the sweet smell from the fungal mats.

“We go in there and treat the trees that are sick,” said Speed. “We treat the ones around it, or it’s actual root systems, because the way oak wilt moves, as a rule, once it gets established in an area, it goes through the roots from tree to tree. It’s like they’re swapping spit. When they do that, the disease goes from one tree the next to the next. What we do is we go on a piece of ranch land, treat the trees that are sick, and treat the ones surrounding which we know the oak wilt is in the root systems, and pretty much shut it down.”

Having worked on her own trees to ensure her 200-year-old live oaks will live to see future generations, Priest urges and encourages those within the Columbus community to do the same as she has, having spotted oak wilt throughout town on several different trees.

“I stared down my street one day,” said Priest. “I saw my neighbor had these mott trees; smaller oaks that make look like one grand oak. I noticed the trees in the center were dying. I know we have it in that area. Then I see another man further down the road losing some trees as well.”

One biggest takeaway Priest hopes people come to understand is how careful they need to be when treating oak wilt and how they handle trimming their trees, disinfecting tools and what times are appropriate to cut the trees. With more information available and with people becoming aware of the severity and seriousness of the disease, they can prevent the issue from becoming rampant in Columbus and taking the lives of the very trees they hold so near and dear.

“You have to be careful about trimming and cutting your trees,” said Priest. “You don’t want to take to cut a tree that’s infested or infected and go to a healthy tree, because you can get the fungus on your chainsaw or your clippers and transfer it to another tree. The main thing is to get people to understand about when to trim trees, there’s a time that you should trim them, that you can and a time that you really shouldn’t because of the beetle.”