I'll start with the beauty, since the beast is such a Fresh Hell. Hats off to Dorothy Parker for immortalizing that phrase. It has never, in my life, been more spot on.
John took the picture of these Jack-in-the-pulpits. Pretty amazing, isn't it? They are really tough to spot on the forest floor. They are also, according to the internet, extremely poisonous. Sort of a variation of "pretty with teeth". I'm going to wander down to this spot everyday to see how they progress. I may even remember to bring my phone, so stay tuned.
The Fresh Hell Beast is this disease that is showing up all over our region. It's called Beech Leaf Disease, and as far as we can see, it's infecting almost all of our Beech trees. This is devastating, under any circumstance, more so given how much of our forest is beech. The Maine Forestry Service says it is "associated" with a non-native nematode. (see Beech Leaf Disease)
The disease first showed up in Ohio in 2012, but by 2020 has reached all the way up Maine, and across to Michigan. The spread seems to be much more eastward than westward.
Small trees on our property are already dead from it, and we can see it in the over story, though not the highest over story. I have a dread that I can hardly write that it will infect our beautiful Copper Beech, which, as I said in an earlier post, had an unusual leafing out pattern this year. We don't see the distorted leaves yet.
John once commented that it must have been a horrific sight when all of the American Chestnut forests died. Miles and miles of dead mature forest. My chest gets tight, my eyes tear.
What webs we weave.
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