Phil Marshall, the forest health specialist in Indiana who helped me a ton with the chestnut oak decline, agreed that the pictures I sent are all consistent with oak wilt. Virginia DOF officially maintains that there is no oak wilt in VA, but the range map for oak wilt stops at the VA state line, so not sure. Shenandoah NP has seen similar symptoms but assumed it was leaf scorch - say they will try to get some testing done.
I think Rachel mentioned that she'd found a few oaks which were labeled as healthy last census but were suddenly doing very poorly this year. I think she said she just assumed they were mislabeled last year. If i'm remembering that right, those would be the first trees i'd check up on!
From C. Dow:
Phil Marshall, the forest health specialist in Indiana who helped me a ton with the chestnut oak decline, agreed that the pictures I sent are all consistent with oak wilt. Virginia DOF officially maintains that there is no oak wilt in VA, but the range map for oak wilt stops at the VA state line, so not sure. Shenandoah NP has seen similar symptoms but assumed it was leaf scorch - say they will try to get some testing done.
I think Rachel mentioned that she'd found a few oaks which were labeled as healthy last census but were suddenly doing very poorly this year. I think she said she just assumed they were mislabeled last year. If i'm remembering that right, those would be the first trees i'd check up on!