Boston Flora

Tag: Fungal Disease

  • Garden Club of the Back Bay Holiday Wreaths – Saving the Elms

    One mission of The Garden Club of the Back Bay is to beautify the neighborhood, and one historic aspect of the neighborhood is its majestic elms.  As we know, the elm tree population has been decimated by Dutch elm disease, a fungal disease spread by the elm bark beetle.  For many years, the Garden Club has helped fund the inoculation of elm trees, through grants to The Friends of the Public Garden.  This is not inexpensive.  A single application cost between $200 – $300 in the 1980’s.  Thirty years of inflation, naturally, has taken the price, depending on the size of the tree, to the $1,000 range.  In 2009, we gave $4,000 to inoculate trees between Massachusetts Avenue and Charlesgate East.

    Without our fund raising efforts, including the Holiday Wreath project, this financial assistance would not be available.  Please remember the elms as you decide to purchase one of our exquisite wreaths or our full, extra large poinsettia plants.  To order, click here.

  • Tuesday, September 15, 6:30 pm – Notes from the Wildlife Hot Zone

    In recent decades, a wave of enigmatic population crashes and extinctions has swept through frog species in the Americas, Australia and elsewhere. More than two decades of research strongly suggest that a recently introduced fungal disease was largely responsible for this biodiversity catastrophe. More recently and closer to home, bats have been dying in droves in the caves and mines of their eastern United States wintering sites. Again, the most likely suspect is a recently introduced fungal disease. Biologists were tragically slow to accept a disease as the principal cause of frog disappearances and even slower to act. Can bat biologists learn from these mistakes? Is it possible to intervene to help wildlife populations threatened by disease?
    Dr. Bryan Windmiller, Ecological Consultant and Founder of Hyla Ecological Services, Concord, Massachusetts will present this free lecture at the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Conference Rooms 5 & 6, on Tuesday, September 15 beginning at 6:30 pm.  No advance registration required.

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