Emerald Ash Beetle

This is mostly for Nina, as very few Americans have ash bonsai. We visited the forestry school greenhouse yesterday, & the curator mentioned that the emerald ash beetle has been sighted in New York State. He gave my green ash in the backyard five more years.
Iris

And while we're on the subject of new threats, I heard a fragment of a piece on NPR yesterday (?) about some new insect/fungus threat to the American beech (Fagus grandifolia). It seems some insect peculiar to beech starts the problem and a fungus moves in an finishes it. The problem affects the bark.

Dunno if it would affect bonsai, or other species of beech.

I'm just back from the 4th Sudden Oak Death Science Symposium. It's getting hard to keep track of all the threats to trees right now, but the worst is certainly the emerald ash borer. The beetle is fast and prolific (unlike the clunky asian longhorn beetle) and it doesn't kill 90% of the trees it attacks, it kills 100%. So I'm afraid ashes are doomed.

The Beech thing has been around for decades, unless this is something so new I haven't heard about it.

The Beech thing has been around for decades, unless this is something so new I haven't heard about it.

As I said, I only heard a fragment, but (allowing for a certain amount of "gee whiz" exaggeration on the part of the reporter) he said it was spreading "down the eastern seaboard" an d that "all" beech were threatened. He may even have said Doomed!

The thing I'm thinking about (beetle plus Nectria canker) started in Upstate NY when I was a graduate student. It was, indeed, killing forest beech. It's possible it has now spread south.