"Emerald ash borer beetles have killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in the U.S. Now, researchers are nurturing ash that can withstand the insects, in the hope of producing resistant seeds that would ensure a future for trees that are a crucial part of Eastern forests."
"The tree Radka Wildova and Jonathan Rosenthal wanted to show me was only a few hundred feet from the trail at Tivoli Bays, a state wildlife management area in Rhinebeck, New York. But getting to it required bushwhacking through a thicket of non-native honeysuckle, multiflora rose, and poison ivy. “It’s like a museum of invasives here,” Rosenthal, an ecologist based in nearby New Paltz, observed as we stumbled through the underbrush.
The tree, once reached, was maybe a hundred feet high and ten inches in diameter. It was sporting a metal tag that identified it as number 047. “This is a green ash,” Wildova, a botanist who’s also based in New Paltz (and is Rosenthal’s wife) announced. Ash trees are dioecious, meaning they produce either all male or all female flowers.
“I think it’s a she,“ Wildova said. “But they don’t flower every year, so it can be hard to tell.”
What was distinctive about tree number 047 was that it was not just alive, but healthy. Since emerald ash borer beetles were first introduced to the United States, probably in the 1990s, hundreds of millions of trees have died. In the Hudson Valley, the vast majority of ash have succumbed."
Elizabeth Kolbert reports for Yale Environment 360 June 25, 2024.
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