Wound sealing announcement and request

[Reed]

I'm familiar with all three schools of thought and also have compiled literature in addition to conducting some field trials on the pros and cons of the issue.

Many holes have been made in the conventional wisdom, especially here in light of our current systemic disease epidemics.

Right now, in the midst of a municipality job at a golf course, I'm spending too much time on the ground with the critics. On a hunch three years ago I began incorporating a deterrent into my bar oil rather than the silly attempts to seal each cut and keep the oaks from healing properly. My method appears to work for beyond the necessary time that a proven vector would detect and parasitize or feed from the carbohydrates released. Return exams indicate a healthy callous over the wounds.

I was wondering if you could post any additional literature on the leaving the wounds alone - the city's calling-in the fools from the lab that originally screwed-up the entire oak wilt debacle.

Look specifically for info on wilt/wounds/sealent no no's. Or, you can add your bit 'o wisdom.

Thank you.

 

[rumination]

Sorry I can't give you any useful advice here, but I am curious what kind of additive you are putting in your bar oil.

Best of luck!

 

[Reed]

U.S. Government DEET (the "harmless" kind)

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

About 5% of what ever you run in the bar oil tank of your saw ends up in or on the operator, according to a recent study.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Sean Gere has been involved with some sstudies and knows the WDNR's Expert on OW. I'll send the page to him and see if he can get you in contact with the lady who's hyphenated name escapes me right now.

I knwo there are some people advocating paint for active vector season.

I've heard that common flys feeding on fungal mats then going over to fresh wounds to get a dring can be a vector

 

[Reed]

Thanks JPS.

On the other issue...

the Pentagon says it's safe. Toxicologists maintain it isn't. I didn't believe Rumsfeld and I believe Clarke. But if you knew me and my exposure histories, it's akin to a Hiroshima survivor talking on a cell phone.

Not really DEET but a molecularly similar compound.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Jenny Juzwick who works for the USFS in ST. Paul has shown that the OW bark beetles will show up at the fresh cuts within minutes of the wounding. They are attracted by the odor. You might add some kind of perfume or stink to mask the odor along with the DEET if you're trying to dissuade the bugs from coming around.

Tom

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I thought that's what deet does, dissuade by oder.

 

[Reed]

I'm acquainted with those pesky little nitidulae and their food choices. Plus the fact that these oaks HAVE to be done now, in early yet proven season that these known vectors are flying about, there are other suspected disease transmitters as well - but one known fact is the fungal mats (mycelia) are not quite yet in development therefore the spores needed that seed the wilt and only come from these sexual growths are also then...not available.

So we have at least the known vectors flying about and testing the main dish, but not carrying the necessary ingredients to propagate a catastrophy, at least not by understood pathology. Could maybe Jennifer qualify that no known isolation sampling has identified active reproductive spores on beetles caught "pre-season" to traditional spore-producing time periods?

Realizing that Texas here has thrown a wrench on conventional wilt thinking - that our temp extremes have no effect on wilt or our selected hosts vary in tylosis response and trenching solid rock to sever engraftments has only (in my opinion) produced a much more virulant disease event. The golf-course pruning I'm doing is on trees tested positive and in successful management of wilt (I treated them 5 and 4 years ago, confirmation of isolate done by A&M) and most of the trim involves deadwood, but so many of this area's leasure-suited retirees are A&M alumni and they see me up there and start screaming bloody murder to the city council and anyone else who has only listened to the "experts" and here I sit - in limbo and delaying further work while the mats are ready to burst and spawn another season of death and brimstone. Certainly Jennifer can agree that an oak infected with disease can't catch it again, or that any insect vector, known or otherwise, can infect a tree with the spores needed to seed infection when those spores are not yet available.

I guess I need some printed material. I might seek Shigo on this, and temp his response by indicating a purchase of a caseload of sealer crap, about to be applied to some very ancient and magestic Q. fusiformis x virginianna.

Quagmire indeed, this one's got Reed.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Over the last couple of summers the projects that Jenny and her grad students are working on have been to bracket the bark beetle's lives and finding if/when they carry spores around. I've been doing the climbing part of her projects for about eight years now so I get a little insight into what is going on.

Last week Jenny presented some of the findings. I can't remember exactly how all the graphing went. They did find spores on beetles all through the season. If I find a link to her research I'll post it.

Tom

 

[Reed]

Yikes.

But again, seasonal differences and the species that produces a fungal mat here (for ninety out of a hundred samples) are so different from the Nordland, it's fly by the seat of my saddle.

I wish that Jenny could have (1), an appropriate research grant that would enable her to dive-into the Texas epidemic to find and publish some valid facts that would at least help us gain a consensus on the issue state-wide, and (2), be considered a stand-out and vangaard and assign some of her students to the question of genetic abberations and markers that could lead to the development of a bacterial release to nail this pathogen once and for all. She seemed to be on that road a few years ago when I met her at one of our Wilt conferences in Austin. Funding, I believe, was the determining factor in ending that hunch. Tell her hello and that the researchers that were bumbling the disease here then are now mostly in private business and the new ones are not much better - myself included. We (they) have a nasty and lazy tendency to just repeat every finding from the north, assuming it's the same here as there - as they did on the denial of this being wilt back in the 70's and early 80's (thinking it doesn't survive past 90-some degrees F).

If it's shown that spores are survivable (and perhaps available)throughout the year (like a virus), I guess then that I'll both have to get all gummy and keep wounds from healing properly. At least I have the evidence in hand that a diseased tree is in no danger of exposure to disease. Most walk-in dealers here have stopped carrying climbing gaffs, as you remember, due to disease. When I pointed-out that dead trees need not be so carefully handled all I got was a blank stare and a usual "uh".

If it's no bother, could you maybe ask her if a pheromone-based deterent in bar oil might buy some time in keeping a pruning wound from becoming an infection site for that important window of time needed to innoculate successfully?

Thanks Tom, sure appreciate all your help here.

 

[Nathan Wreyford]

Nitidulid, there is a name I haven't missed. Conspiracy theory if I have ever heard one. An easy answer to the mystery X vector.

Chupacabra maybe?


Reed - in more ways than one I am glad to see you are still keeping up the good fight.


.02

 

[Reed]

Yo Nate!

Wie ist das Leben geheiratet?

All I tried to do was something a little more black and white....you know, like a takedown or something with no expectations. Simplicity and sweat. Dead limbs, removals, and pruning. But no - it's "dat damm oak decline or whatever they call it".

One golfer yelled "Did you okay that work with A&M before you started?" Umm, no. I'm sorry.

Yeah, here is just like here was, only now people just started noticing a couple dead rotting trees about. Ironic it's me up there getting them all bent outta shape, eh?

I have a hazmat suit with portable air supply from the good 'ol days. I think I'll wear it tomorrow just to rattle a few folks...unfold the parabola antennae and string-up some toxic spill warning tape too. ???? oak decline.

 

[Nathan Wreyford]

Originally posted by oakwilt
Yo Nate!

Wie ist das Leben geheiratet?

Es gehts.

Manchmal denke ich sie ist ein Engle und anderes, der Teufel. Das is eine Geschicte für ein anderes Mal.

I'll leave it at that. The move has been hard on us.

I miss Texas and live oaks.

Getting tired of picea and bark beetles.

Spent the day pruning chestnuts and knocking down a few picea in the SNOW. What I don't miss is people asking "are you going to paint those cuts?"

 

[Reed]

Zeit heilt Verletzungen.

Behalten Sie, um sie zu lieben, okay?

It must seem unfair that you put-up with the Summer AND the early chill of Winter here and now are missing our Spring...best time of the seasons. They say suffering thru the extremes of both rewards one when April, May, and June come. It's looking to be a good Bluebonnet explosion.

Hey - no fire ants there, or rattlesnakes, I could manage a zoological sample of a live Armadillo if you treat him as a first-born and bring him back soon! Insert a Gary P. Nunn homesick London blues tape - once a Texan, always. She'll get used to it.

Following your clue on vectors. I think the key is smell - losing my sight and hearing but the nose knows.

Light one for me,

Reed

 

[mquinn]

in response to your original quest, i made a quick search in AGRICOLA - international database for ag and forestry research which is current as of march 19. since you already have the info on wound sealants in general, i used all three of the terms you designated (includes wilt) - no records returned. you probably already suspected that would be the case.

you're in the spot that drives discovery, but you're also in a spot that prevents yours from being widely disseminated and even narrowly respected.

i'll have to think about it for a while, but right now i don't think we have any situation and layout here that would lend itself to researching your method of bar oil treatment. sounds like an ingenious idea to me. but i wonder how you decide the optimal dosage. and i don't know anything about chainsaw performance, but i guess that'd be no more or less of a problem than any application equipment. there's a lot of research there. i doubt anyone is going to take it up in a sexy academic setting, unfortunately. maybe. i'll talk to our arborist and see if we have any tree conditions and settings that would lend themselves. if we do, maybe i'll look at the possibilities of research...but that's not going to help you now.

you're well aware of the limits and drawbacks to formal research anyway, so...

as for the repellant - perhaps you'd get a more favorable reaction if you were using neem?

have you tried garlic oil?

 

[Reed]

I'm looking at whatever is appalling to the one documented vector - collected a few (what I gather to be) accused bark beetles by setting out fresh-cut samples and fly-paper sections adhering to such. A dozen so far but have some other business to tend to - I'll chamber them and begin the process this evening using everything from ground psycho-active fungal samples to Uncle Remus' Cajon Chicken Fire Sauce.

Sure would be easier if I had access to some neuro-active pheromones proven to stimulate this particular line of offenders - if any exist. Meantime I'll stick with the all-purpose bug repellent as it shows zero activity in the attraction department at least to eight hours after the tempting cuts.

As duct tape has proven far superior to Epidermex and Band-Aid in accidental ligature and peanut butter to potato-dextrose cultural media, the under-kitchen sink cabinet approach to available quick-fix chemistry has allowed me to get this far, which is not saying anything one way or the other. You understand.

Okay, off to the junk yard with my trusty cutting torch and WD40.

 

[mquinn]

pheromones for attracting? there may be - if that's what you're after, check with www.greatlakesipm.com they're the only place i could find elm bark beetle pheromone in '00.

or maybe phero tech in canada?

and, if what you have works, there you are. what i meant by favorable reaction with neem was not for the insects - which i'm only assuming would happen - but with the politicos you're trying to sell your method on. i only thought they might be looking at you narrow-eyed when you say deet.

 

[Reed]

Are you kidding? Politicos with narrow eyes skeptical of toxicity?

These guys are junior versions of the guys who made war - they don't care about depleted uranium or neutron bombs' effects on the low life's.

They just want to see dripping goo, even gone so far as to tell me it's not that important to seal all the wounds, just the ones people can see.

It's just temptation to go further from where I am in regards to disease. I was quietly pruning until some Aggie golfers were angry about the long drive slice they nailed and hit my truck parked way off the fairway. They blame me for bad aim, can't find their balls, and notice fresh wounds. Pick on the tree guy and inform him about oak wilt. Uh huh. Tell me about it please.

So interim interest on the histology. Inspired by an old oak, not people. Did you know there are wound dressings available in designer choices.....brown, grey, moss, and mauve?

Michelle, what eats little beetles?

 

[rumination]

I've got another unhelpful post here, but I am really curious so I have to ask. How long do fresh cuts remain as potential infection sites? Is it until sap stops flowing, or the top layer of wood dries?

Once again oakwilt, best of luck, and keep up the struggle. Wish I could help out somehow.