In my city of Reno, the average temperature has increased about 7 degrees on average since the 1970s, making it one of the fastest warming cities in t
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In my city of Reno, the average temperature has increased about 7 degrees on average since the 1970s, making it one of the fastest warming cities in the nation. For the trees, it means there are new parameters for pests to live here where they wouldn’t have survived otherwise. This year I’ve seen two new issues I’ve never seen before, and they were both spotted about a week apart in the peak of the summer.
This marking was found on a Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) and I really had no idea what I was looking at. My best guess was some kind of fungal body. The center of the growth was slightly raised, and had a scabby texture, the “arms” were slightly velvety, and most did not connect to the growth in the middle. It reminded me of something from Stranger Things, or an octopus. Either way I was stumped. I reached out to some of my more trusted arborists and wouldn’t you believe they didn’t know either? I heard everything from beetles to electrical shock. I might have found something new (to our area anyways). So lastly, I had to reach out to people online, and someone actually got an ID on it pretty quickly.
It is caused by a fly. An “Epidermal Bark Fly” evidently. I could hardly find any information on it online, but it’s still probably because I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. Supposedly they don’t do any real damage to the tree, I would have loved to cut it open to try and find one, maybe I’ll get lucky next time.
Next up on this post is an Ash tree. This species of tree is very popular here in our area, but in the last few years we’ve gotten some new pests that are really doing a number on them. This was something else new, but unlike the epidermal fly I’ve seen this many times for basically my entire life.
Mistletoe! There are native mistletoe’s to Nevada, like the ones I see all the time on junipers and pines but this is the common mistletoe , a non-native. I have a fun theory where someone got some in a bag around the holidays and hung it on on the ceiling. After the holidays were over it was somehow thrown outside instead of in the garbage and an insuspecting bird found and consumed the berries. Afterwords the bird distributed the seeds on this ash tree and wa-la! We’ve got our first case of a parasitic plant growing on ashes here in northern Nevada. That’s my theory anyways.
