May 8, 2013
The phone has been ringing off the hook lately with calls from people describing sick and dying Douglas-fir and other conifer trees. The trees are of a wide range of ages and in many environments and settings, although most calls have been coming from within the valley margin and have to do with young trees. [...]
April 27, 2013
In response to last week’s post on the value of dead wood in the forest, I received this e-mail from a landowner: “We’ve never left much on the ground in the way of dead wood…not during logging, but wind damaged, etc. Our thought has always been that these rotting logs increase the insects in the [...]
March 29, 2013
I recently got a call from a guy selling some woodland property in the Coast Range. A prospective buyer recently told him that he had Swiss needle cast (SNC) and so was not interested in buying the property. It is not hard to find the disease in western Oregon. It is a native disease of [...]
August 3, 2012
Submitted by Glenn Ahrens, OSU Extension Forester, Clackamas, Marion & Hood River Counties Alder flea beetles are particularly active this summer as they go about their business of skeletonizing leaves on red alder trees. I have seen this come and go over the years, and generally flea beetles are not a serious threat. Flea beetle [...]
June 21, 2012
The western tent caterpillar is a native insect to our forests. It population is cyclical. Over a period of two to three years, the population builds up and then crashes as natural parasites and diseases kill them off. Then we don’t see them again for maybe 8 – 10 years. This week I saw some tent [...]
August 26, 2011
Summer must be coming to an end. I say that not because the kids are going back to school or the tomatoes are (finally) starting to turn red, but because today I got my first call of the year about a strange and striking looking insect. This is a banded alder borer. It is a [...]
June 1, 2011
By Paul Oester and Dave Shaw, OSU Extension Service History A native of Europe, North Africa and the Near East, the green alder sawfly (Monsoma pulveratum) (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidae) was first found in North America in eastern Canada in the early 1990’s, then in Alaska in 2004. More recently, the green alder sawfly was identified in [...]
