Georgia Bans California Nursery Plants

ATLANTA, Ga. – The Georgia Department of Agriculture has banned all shipments of nursery plants from California because of an outbreak of a devastating fungal disease in at least one nursery and possibly others, officials said March 15.

Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin said he imposed the quarantine after he was notified that the sudden oak death fungus had been discovered on camellias at Monrovia Nursery in Azusa. Monrovia is a major supplier of many kinds of plants to garden centers across the country.

The disease has also been discovered at another nursery, Specialty Plants Inc., of San Marcos, Calif., Irvin said.

He said his staff was trying to determine if Specialty Plants had shipped plants to Georgia.

“There are 11 other California nurseries where high risk samples have been taken,” Irvin said. “The California Department of Food and Agriculture has said they are 90-percent sure the samples are positive for the disease, but they will not quarantine the nurseries and have said they will not release the names of the nurseries until the samples are confirmed positive, probably sometime next week. We are closing the borders to all California nurseries ... until they release the names of the 11 nurseries.”

Sudden oak death is blamed for killing tens of thousands of oak trees along the West Coast since 1995.

“Sudden oak death is an extremely serious disease,” Irvin said. “It not only affects oaks but other plants as well, including azaleas, rhododendrons, maples, beeches and buckeyes. This has the potential to be more devastating than Chestnut Blight, which wiped out virtually all stands of the native American chestnut in the 1930s. The cost to lumber companies, homeowners, gardeners, and cities would be overwhelming and the damage to wildlife and our landscape would be heartbreaking.”

The fungus that causes the disease, Phytophthora, has killed tens of thousands of black oak, coast live oak and tan oak trees in Northern California and southern Oregon since it appeared. In 2002, California scientists discovered coast redwoods and Douglas fir also are susceptible, as are at least 14 other plant species.

Source: The Associated Press