How An Ancient Oaks Wisdom Fights Disease

[Music] this is the Majesty Oak it is the UK's largest and one of our oldest Maiden oak trees it is a beauty as much as it is a beast a maiden is a tree which has never been pollarded or cassed this tree has been free to grow it's one of our tallest oak trees and has been flourishing since 1554 with people traveling purposefully just to see its magnificent and 500 years later still it stands but I had to give it a hug because it's under threat from a serious disease known as acute Oak decline now aod is a relatively new disease here in the UK we're still trying to understand it but we have seen it kill mature oak trees within 5 years now that is a really rapid decline for what should be a really long live species affected trees they bleed from this stem it's this dark bleeding which comes out of the main stem and runs down and it forms these lesions these fissures of decaying and blackening wood and in really badly affected trees there are these tiny holes all over the stem the crown begins to die back the leaves deteriorate and under all of this stress the tree is now open to stress from other pests and diseases which ultimately take hold of the tree accelerating the decline and the tree dies and this worries me this worries me because the oak is is not only our most common tree but it's also our most cherished tree they are pillars of life that represent longevity and strength and I fear now that that is under threat you know we've already seen entire tree species basically wiped out in this country think of the elm with Dutch elm disease and think of the Ash with Ash dieback I fear that the oak could be facing a similar fate to help us understand this issue I've picked the brains of Dr Oliver Booth we'll be visiting an oak Woodland suffering from acute Oak decline here ol has spent years understanding how the disease has been spreading and affecting the trees and he's made some fascinating discoveries but there's also someone else I'd like you to meet first where is he I think I just saw him over there wizard where are you mate oh there you are ooh some sticky blueberries haven't had them in a long time delicious oh hello there earthlings it is I wizard The Wild I'm afraid that you meet me at a bit of a war some time you see I'm very occupied over this acute Oak decline but I can see hope Solutions can come in many unexpected and mysterious ways I've recently entered into the Cyber Realms being a wizard of modern times I've had to adapt to the interwebs a perilous place without the security of North VPN who we welcome to leave curious as the supporter of the channel you see North VPN they are a defense against the evil hidden within the interweb and actually much more whether if I'm browsing for new robes or looking up the latest potion recipes or even watching the latest leave curious videos I know that I can do this safely because North VN is providing me with a safe and secure network whichever habitat I find myself in you see my Wizarding Powers they have no use in the interwebs so having nor VPN keeping me safe from all of the hackers and trackers and password Steelers it really does give me peace of mind oh and on a Friday night I can safely check out my favorite us Netflix programs just by pressing one button actually it's very good there you go all done since I've been alive for the past 4,000 years adapting to technology has been somewhat challenging but with nor VPN the whole process has been incredibly intuitive and it operates in the background and right now they're offering a 30-day money back guarantee so for whatever reason that she would would like it not that I can think of any you would get all of your coins back so do make your way down to the description of the video where you'll find a link to novpn slle curious click on that and if you sign up for a 2-year plan you'll get 4 months extra for free you'll see Rob and I really are grateful for nor VPN for supporting the channel it really does enable the creation of these wonderful videos in the in the mid 1990s a disease began to sweep across the US affecting their native oak trees phyo roron or known by its common name as sudden Oak death phopa was most prevalent in the states of California and Oregon and it affected the North American Native Oak and the tan Oak and it caused this oozing and this bleeding from the stems and then the crowns died back and the tree rapidly declined and then they died and the worry was the fear was was that this disease would make it across to the UK and affect our native oak trees and in 2006 we observed some bleeding on our native Oaks samples of the bleed were sent off for testing had sudden Oak death made its way across to the UK well the results came back and it wasn't phitop the truth is at that time we didn't know what was causing this bleeding but it was spreading and it was getting worse in 2009 a study was published which looked into the cause of the bleeding on our Oaks and it found that it was bacteria it was actually three different species of bacteria infecting the tree and causing the bleeds and we never seen bacteria species like this affecting our oak trees this was a new discovery and we had really no idea of how they got there but there were some Clues so I'm pretty certain that down here is an exit hole of the aillis beetle now this is a bark boring Beetle as you can see this oak tree is in a pretty bad way it's got bleeds all up the stem and all the wood down here is fully decayed I would be pretty sure that when this box was in place you would have seen a lot more of these exit holes but it's just decayed and it's fallen off what happens is the adults come along and they deposit their larae into the tree and that's where the larae live and that's where they feed they feed on the soft tissues of the tree and this disrupts the nutrient flow and just ultimately really stresses the tree and it's thought that it's the aillis beetle which is moving this bacterial infection around and it's these two main stresses it's the it's it's the boring and the eating of the agis Beet and it's the bacteria infection which ultimately stresses the tree and opens it up to other pest and diseases and then it dies that's a cute Oak decline The Oaks in this Woodland are suffering from aod especially from the bacterial bleeds but interestingly enough very few of the trees show signs of the aillis beetle having studied a section of the Oaks in this Woodland Ole has some insights into how the disease may be spreading here as I say there's not that much of Gillis here plenty of bleed but not much of Gris and certainly not something that um had the ability to measure but there's still a spread two different trees of different bacteria you'd have thought that there would be exit holes because otherwise it's going to have a limited time in which it can actually move around but what I have found is because we've mapped all the trees here and we've mapped where the movement has been with the different um bleeds is that actually it's very localized and so it's probable that is moving throughout through the soils either interrelated with the root systems or um through microle relations between the the trees if we have a look at these bleed caners rob you can have a look in here a bit more this is most interesting here you can see that there has been a a bleed canker because you can tell from the dark staining around and what you're looking at here with this um material around here is callus tissue so what's that showing is that the wound is healing it's not necessarily stopping the bleed caner but it is healing over the damaged wood that's occurred there this is for my mind a clear sign of remission where the tree is defending itself to understand why certain trees have been able to defend against the infection Ole used a resistor graph this machine sends a very small diameter but long drill bit into the tree measuring the resistance of the wood by doing this you're able to get a reading which shows the tree's growth rings which you can only otherwise see after chopping down the tree a tree growth rings give you a picture of its life and how it's responded to severe climactic events in the past such as droughts or floods strangely enough the ones that um didn't recover so well from that drought or whose growth slowed down were actually the trees that have shown more abilities to fight the bacterial disease we've always Associated the health of a tree being directly related to the incremental growth so if a tree is really healthy it's putting on lots of growth basically but the tree is doing more things with all the energies that it's taken from the soils than just growth it's putting it into secondary metabolite production it's put it into growth of the bud systems it's putting it into the structural development of the timber that's there so when we think about a healthy tree and we think oh that's a big healthy tree because it's got big incremental growth it's like well not necessarily because it it might have um strong growth from that point of view but does it have the facility to be more resilient the resilience isn't there yeah it's just waiting yeah very interesting actually that that is it is something that uh I've got to be honest is something that I find really interesting considering this idea of adaptation and resilience you think that a tree like Majesty that's seen so many centuries you think that this tree will have incredible resilience having lived through so many different climactic events stresses and plights perhaps for a tree of Majesty's size experience and stage of Life perhaps the stresses of acute Oak decline could be managed there is no cure for aod right now management is based around bios security and really just preventing the spread research is ongoing to try and figure out how trees are being infected and really how they're responding to it and when you come here to a patch of Woodland like this to a patch of Oaks like this you know you would think you're just looking at oak trees but you're not you're actually looking at individuals individual trees choosing to act in different ways so cheers toy for being part of the video and sharing his research and his insights it's really fascinating and of course thanks to uh wizard for letting us know about nordvpn who are kindly supporting the channel I just trying to look to see where he's gone gone if you want to keep watching the channel then please check out the video that's on the screen now I'm sure you'll enjoy it but if not thanks for watching leave curious

Channel: Leave Curious

Views: 27,740

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Id: ljyceah_Gg8

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024