[VoodooChile]

It's official. EAB has been found in Ozaukee County here in Wisconsin.
Emerald Ash Borer Resource Guide - Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
JS Online: NewsWatch

This will be a big hit on the state's nursery industry, which has hundreds of thousands of ash trees in production, that are now essentially junk. Given the difficulties the nursery industry is facing already with the economic downturn, this could be the straw that breaks a few more backs.

There are 770 million ash trees in Wisconsin, and the state is following an evolved strategy in combating the pest. Ohio and Michigan both proved that aggressive clear-cutting did little to combat the pest. JS Online: Are we barking up the wrong tree? High-value trees will be injected with pesticide. Detection stations will be deployed in high-stress areas.

You gotta hope biological controls are in the immediate future, before EAB takes a huge chunk out of our urban canopy and native forests.

And let's hope us landscapers continue to take the lessons of the past like Dutch Elm disease and EAB to heart, and plant a diverse selection of woodies and chose seed-grown material over cultivars in our gardens and landscapes.

Genetic and species diversity is the best defense against biological globalization.

[Stonehenge]

A local builder bought a tree farm from a mom and pop operation 2 years ago - it was a tree farm made solely of Ash trees. The builder must not have known the potential for EAB.

We haven't planted an Ash in at least three years. Though that helps me, not the Ash trees.

I wonder how hard it might be to find seed-grown plant material.

[dan deutekom]

Here is a link to the City of Toronto's fight against this pest
City of Toronto: Urban Forestry - Emerald Ash Borer

We have to smarten up.

[Lanelle]

It's official here also. EAB has been found in two locations in our county(Fairfax) in Northern VA.
One site is just a few blocks from my office.

My friends at Bartlett Tree Experts said it wasn't a matter of 'if', rather a matter of 'when' we would have EAB.
This doesn't bode well for our country's logging industry as well as for the loss of a landscape treee.

[VoodooChile]

Stone:
I think the reason why seed-grown nursery stock isn't more readily available comes down to demand. There is a notion in the nursery industry and among the general public that plants need to be both: 1) coddled (i.e. Miracle Grow, irrigation systems, Styrofoam rose huts) and 2) improved (i.e. dwarf purple plants that bloom for nine months and smell like P.B.R.). Certainly in some situations coddling and improving is good, but...

In many landscape applications seed-grown stock is preferable; median strips, parks, parking lots, remediation and restoration sites all benefit from using seed grown stock because the genetic diversity insures a better chance of survival in the face of environmental stresses like global warming and exotic pests.

The likelihood that the genes in 'Autumn Purple' Ash harbor resistance to E.A.B. is next to nothing, and if we didn't have to have a purple beast blinding us on every street corner and in every front yard in America, there would be a better chance that somewhere sometime some Ash tree would demonstrate resistance to E.A.B. and we would have found the genetic resource to insure that Ash trees remain a viable part of our natural world.

Anyway.... where I am at in southeastern Wisconsin, Possibility Place Nursery in Monee IL. and Glacier Oaks Nursery in Harvard IL. are two good sources for seed grown stock.