Specialty Gardening: Cottage Garden Seed Swap & Chat #19, 0 by dryad57

dryad57 wrote:
Lea, the emerald ash borer came to us via shipping pallets in Detroit, and has spread primarily due to folks bringing firewood back from camping trips in Michigan. Michigan has had hundreds of acres decimated, and the borer, as you know, is slowly spreading. The nasty thing about this bug is it attacks at the crown of the tree, so by the time you see symptoms it's already well infested. (Unlike the Japanese Longhorn Beetle, which attacks the trunk and leaves a much larger entry hole.) I know that there are some trees in Indy that have been infected, but I don't know how far it's spread around here. I think the ash tree behind us will fail due to old age (and it may even be hollow, not sure) before the borers get it. On the other hand, I've got a client with a really nice ash tree that's about 25' high, and she wants to get rid of it before it gets bigger and costs her more to get rid of if it gets attacked. Unfortunately, the economy put an end to that plan this past year - she's hoping we can take it out this next year and replace it with a red maple. And she's "old school" too, she doesn't want any of the new hybrid reds, she wants one of the original old red maples :-)

Here's a shot of the ash behind us, after they finished trimming a bunch off the left side. I so love this tree...