About 5 years ago, Gypsy moths invaded our oaks (primarily chestnut and red) and defoliated virtually all of them by mid summer. Ever since, they have been struggling. Most have survived, but some continue to die off each year. There are three dead ones (or at least branches from 3) in this pic from yesterday. The two in the middle are now CSS. This has left me with more standing dead than I can keep up with (I’ve been burning for years but just recently jumped into hoarding). Most of what I’m cutting now has a half inch of spongy rot along the outside edge.
Welcome to the forum and welcome to the club. Ct has an abundance of dying oaks and ash right now. Seems the White Oak took it the hardest but where there’s no whites they got the red. A little punk doesn’t hurt.
Certainly sucks to lose the trees but at least you can get some use out of them instead of them just decaying in the woods.
I’ve got plenty of room so that thankfully won’t be an issue. Thanks to the Rona, I’ve got more time than normal also, so we will see how much I get done before winter really hits.
My parent's property got hit by gypsy moths back in the 80's. We were in a swath that got completely defoiliated. We had several oak trees that died off on our property. If you looked at the mountain where we lived from the next ridge, you could see a distinct brown area where the gypsy moth caterpillars came through. Sad.
That’s exactly like it was here. Our ridge top was hit very hard while the neighbors had minimal damage. For weeks there was a sound or rain coming from the woods.... in reality it was raining caterpillar poo. I was impressed by how well most of the trees recovered that summer. It was like they entirely leafed out a second time after losing it all.
Same here. We were having a family reunion that year. We had to sweep the driveway off that day due to falling leaf bits and caterpillar frass... twice. My parents and three other neighbors went together and had their properties sprayed by helicopter
I remember the first tree that died on our property, a white oak. It turned brown and lost it leaves every year in about August. After several years of turning early it didn't come back. It was a big beautiful white oak. Probably 30" across.
We were fortunate that few trees died here and after 3 years the moths went away. Don't worry a bit about that little bit of punk which is common with oak. It will burn.
Well chad88 if your simply overrun with dead oak I think I can help ya with that if your close enough to Millmont PA. We’ve experienced a similar event here. My cousin is a forester and explained that up here in the bush the trees get a STD, for lack of a better word, and that’s why we’re seeing 2-6 trees in a group die
The white oaks were hit hard here for several years. Gypsy moths, winter moths, the drought in 2016. I bought a bigger saw to handle some of the bigger ones. There's a lot of dead standing white oaks still and I still have a few here to fell and process. I've tried replacing some but white oaks don't transplant or even grow in pots all that well.
Sounds like what happened here. It wasn’t just one year of moths it was several. We lucked out a bit here. They died off Right at our property line. Had a big rain just as they were getting set to ravage the foliage. The neighbors property with white oaks is all dead.
