|
|
On Friday, North Carolina agriculture officials banned all plant shipments from California nurseries that haven't been inspected for the organism and found to be free of it.
"It's been a devastating disease on the West Coast," Gene Cross, plant pest administrator for the N.C. Department of Agriculture, said Friday. "We're treating it as a very serious problem."
The disease, known as sudden oak death, has never been detected on the East Coast. Parts of North Carolina are considered to be at risk, but scientists here say they don't know whether the pathogen that causes it can thrive in this state's climates or whether the species of oaks in North Carolina are as susceptible.
But if it took hold in North Carolina, the threat would be considerable to the abundant oaks across the state and to the $1 billion-a-year nursery industry and the backyard gardeners who rely on it.
Over the past two weeks, state and federal agriculture inspectors have fanned across North Carolina to track down the shipments, which went to 69 nurseries and garden centers over the past year. They have found plants shipped from the California nursery at 44 businesses, but the plants at the other 25 locations had already been sold and couldn't be tracked down, Cross said.
Agriculture officials have put holds on more than 12,000 plants at those 44 nurseries while they were tested.
Plants that tested positive -- primarily camellias -- were destroyed, and plants near the infected ones also had to be tested. Infected plants have been found in businesses in Raleigh, Apex, Benson, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Newport, Midland and Pineville.
Test results are pending on samples taken at five other businesses. Nine of the nurseries had plants with leaves that had not grown enough to be tested. Those plants can't be tested or sold until the disease has time to develop.
The plants came from Monrovia Growers in the Southern California city of Azusa. Monrovia is one of the largest producers of container-grown plants, with nurseries in several states, including in LaGrange, N.C.
Monrovia sent potentially infected plants to more than 1,200 locations in 39 states. North Carolina is the 10th state to confirm the presence of phytophthora ramorum, the pathogen that causes sudden oak death.
About 60 species of plants either carry or could carry the disease, including camellias and rhododendrons. The organism produces spores that can blow or wash from plants onto trees. The disease rarely kills the plant, and it doesn't appear to transfer between trees.
While agriculture inspectors are chasing the Monrovia plants, state officials and biologists are advising home gardeners not to panic.
State agriculture officials plan to help people deal with potentially infected plants in their yards this summer. The department is too busy tracking down the plants and getting ready for a nationwide survey in May and June that will help officials understand the scope of the problem, Cross said.
North Carolina and four other states were surveyed for the disease last year, and it wasn't detected.
Colleen Warfield, an assistant professor of plant pathology at N.C. State University, said there's no reason to think sudden oak death is present in yards or in undeveloped areas. But she said it's important that officials make sure the nursery stock doesn't introduce it.
"That, unfortunately, only time will tell," she said. "But people don't need to fear buying a plant in a nursery."
Still, the timing is bad. April and May are the busiest months of the year for nurseries, and the plants that can carry the disease are some of the most popular landscaping choices in this part of the country.
Joe Stoffregen is a second-generation nurseryman known for producing and selling healthy plants at Homewood Nursery Inc. in North Raleigh.
An agriculture department inspector told him one of his camellias had tested positive for the fungus-like organism and watched as he set the plant on fire to destroy it.
"Our family's been in this business for over 35 years," Stoffregen said, "and that's the first time I've ever burned a plant."
Nelsa Cox, owner of the Garden Hut in Fuquay-Varina, said inspectors put a temporary hold on some of her plants until tests came back disease-free. But by then, she said, the lilacs had already spent their blooms.
"It's not just nurseries and growers that could be affected," Cox said. "We don't want to pass it on to homeowners."
Anne Clapp, former president of the Triangle Camellia Society, a group of about 25 hobbyist growers, heard about the disease several weeks ago, when it turned up in Georgia.
"I'm not surprised that it has showed up here," she said. "It was just a matter of time. So many of our commercial nurseries are in California, and it's like children with a cold. You send them to the day care, and they share their germs with everybody. The same thing is true of the plant world. Once you get something, it does spread, not rampantly, but quickly."
Ron Gelvin, chief executive officer of the N.C. Association of Nurserymen, said plant diseases show up all the time.
Gelvin praised the way the state Agriculture Department is handling the threat and said he hopes the disease will turn out to be as minor as the early testing suggests.
North Carolina is one of seven states that account for almost two-thirds of all nursery crop output, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports. Greenhouse and nursery sales in North Carolina reached nearly $1 billion in 2001, according to the state.
Sudden oak death was isolated in trees in California in 2000 and spread to Oregon and Washington. Twelve counties on the Northern California coast have been infested.
In March, federal officials unexpectedly discovered the infection at Monrovia and alerted states that had received shipments from the company over the past year. Monrovia's nursery in Azusa destroyed more than 200,000 plants, valued at $4.3 million, after the discovery.
Since then, federal officials imposed a quarantine on California nurseries that ship plants capable of spreading the disease. North Carolina's action Friday, called an outside quarantine, duplicates the federal action to clarify and emphasize the ban, state agriculture officials said.
Florida and George have banned all California nursery stock. Mississippi has imposed an outside quarantine similar to North Carolina's.