Plant Pathology in Relation to Northeastern Forest Wildlife Cover

Abstract

Diseases of woody plants have a direct bearing on the problem of establishing wildlife food and cover plants. If planting and other improvement operations are made without due regard for the role of injurious fungi, the results of such work may be seriously impaired. Most parasitic diseases of trees and shrubs are not destructive enough to cause serious interference with fruit production and protective cover growth but a few may inflict severe damage. This paper points out the significance of some common diseases of northeastern trees and shrubs that are used in wildlife management. Knowledge of the relationships between fungi and their host plants and of their influence on wildlife food and cover plants is useful in several ways. Such information aids in planning timber stand improvement or other cultural operations which the wildlife manager may wish to undertake. These practices, as well as planting wildlife cover or improving that already existing, should not ignore the fact that, without some care, susceptible host plants or the alternate host of a destructive rust may unwittingly be planted or favored. An illustration of such a case would be the use of white pine for winter cover on an area stocked with wild currants, thereby incurring probable loss of the pines by the white pine blister rust. Another consideration makes advisable some knowledge of diseases affecting plants used in wildlife management. An increasing number of small private owners are developing wildlife cover, and the disease actor may become quite important at times ince many diseases of wild trees also attack closely related cultivated and ornamental varieties. If fruit orchards or landscaped grounds adjoin the area under wildlife management, the technician or owner is under at least a moral obligation to avoid introducing diseases inimical to the plants already growing in that locality. This implies both care in the original planting and proper sanitary precautions to keep the plants on wildlife areas reasonably safe from destructive outbreaks of disease. The infectious diseases of trees in the northeast are caused principally by fungi and bacteria, but the former are responsible for most of the diseases considered here. The wildlife manager is interested chiefly with the type of damge sustained by the plant, but a brief eview of the kinds of organisms and their typical life histories is essential to an understanding of the injuries. Table 1 lists the important diseases of the trees and shrubs of the northeast that appear to be of chief interest to him. Transmission of the parasitic organisms is usually direct from a diseased plant to its neighbors of the same kind by animals or wind. Some fungi, however, have an indirect cycle involving life in a second and different intermediate or