Posted May 20, 2020, 2:04 AM
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SUSPENDED
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,518
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nice array of photos....makes me think of a time not too many yrs ago when there wasn't a whole lot between pasadena & west LA....or a time when areas like pasadena had to pick up a lot of the dead weight of dtla & other ailing hoods like mid wilshire & hollywood. A time when old town pasadena & the 3rd st promenade in samo were almost the full amount of sidewalk activity in socal....at least that wasn't too swap meetish & rundown as dtla's broadway has been.
as for the coronavirus, some of the trees in your photos have been dealing with their own form of disease for the past several yrs.....
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Because of the disease’s rapid spread, all the region’s ficus trees could die in 10-30 years, leaving cities with the incredibly expensive task of removing them and planting new trees. More importantly, the wiping out of ficus microcarpa would end a 70-year legacy of mature shade trees enjoyed by 10 million Los Angeles County residents at a time when scientists say global warming is sending temperatures to record highs.
“It is unfortunate we are losing so many trees within the urban forest so rapidly,” said Jerry Turney, plant pathologist and senior biologist for the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner said. “It will be a fast changeover.”
Plant biologists and university researchers say the infestation of urban ficus trees is a recent development, one that can kill the 60- to 70-foot shade trees in two to three years and has no known cure. “It is new to us,” said Turney. “We grew these trees for decades and decades with no problems at all.”
Three years ago, Turney was driving from his South Pasadena home to his laboratory in South Gate when he saw a couple ficus trees on Alhambra’s Main street whose deep green canopy had turned brown and thin. He stopped and took pictures. During a scouting trip last month, Turney examined the same tree located on a parkway strip on Main Street, east of Fremont Avenue. He found more dead ficus trees.
“I was shocked how fast it went on Main Street,” Turney said. “Three years ago, I saw two trees showing the symptoms. Now, it is killing 10 trees. These all went quickly in a three-year period.”
As he walked beneath the dying and dead trees, he pointed to the small bungalows once shaded from the sun. “These homes will all be in the full sun come August,” he predicted.
On Pasadena’s Green Street, a canopy of bright green leaves from branches of ficus trees planted on both sides of the commercial street stretching from Orange Grove Boulevard to Hill Street make it the most shade-filled in the Crown City. Yet, many of the specimens in Pasadena are already infected with the fungal disease, Turney said.
On the eastern edge of Green Street, Turney walked up to a sickly parkway tree on the south side of Green Street near Pasadena City College in Pasadena. Usually, Turney talks excitedly about trees. This time, his cadence slowed. He became like a physician delivering bad news to a terminally ill patient.
“This is all dead wood,” he began, sluffing off pieces of bark clearly infected with charcoal colored spores from the fungus fruit. “This particular ficus microcarpa is in severe decline. There is nothing anyone can do to save it,” Turney said, adding: “You can see the fate of all these trees down here.”
Turney first heard of the disease killing ficus trees in Whittier eight or 10 years ago. “When I saw it, I didn’t know what it was,” he said.
Botryosphaeria has infected ficus trees on Wilshire Boulevard on the west side of Los Angeles, said William McKinley, a certified arborist who works for Glendale and other cities. McKinley said it is so new it has not come across his radar that often. In fact, a recent examination of ficus trees in Glendale at Mountain Street and Verdugo Road found them in good health. “They are very full and thick,” McKinley said.
The fungus attacks the woody portion of the plant, leaving large rivets inside the tree’s bark and branches called cankers. The cankers cut off the flow of water and nutrients to the plant, causing the leaves to fall off and the branches to turn charcoal black and eventually die.
One way to prevent botryosphaeria spores from spreading from tree to tree is to soak the pruning tools in bleach between uses or throw away the blades like a doctor would a tongue depressor. Using chain saws also spreads the disease because they cannot be disinfected, he said.
The best way to stop the spread is to keep trees watered, healthy, and practice safe pruning methods, experts say. In other words, prevention is the best cure. “There is no way to treat it or stop it,” Turney said.
At The Paseo shopping center in Pasadena, some ficus trees are showing signs of the disease, while others look healthy, Turney reported. The ficus on Green Street near Orange Grove Avenue look OK, as compared to the tree canopy near Pasadena City College, which is nearly gone.
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