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Plant lovers in the South are being asked to watch their camellias, rhododendrons and other ornamentals for signs of Sudden Oak Death, a fungal disease that has already killed thousands of trees on the West Coast. U.S. Forest Service officials say the disease — which shows up with spots on leaves and dead twigs — was carried to the region in ornamentals shipped last year from nurseries in California and Oregon. The ornamentals serve as hosts and wind-borne spores can infect nearby oaks, which often die within two years. The fear is that the fungus could have the same effect...

California Environment: How sudden oak death is transforming the state By Richard A. Lovett -- Special To The Bee Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, August 15, 2004 California's oaks are dying. Not all of them - and not the ones around Sacramento, but enough to raise questions about whether the Golden State's ecology is about to be wildly altered. The problem is a blight called sudden oak death, which started cropping up in 1995 and has since killed tens of thousands of trees, mostly in the coastal mountains between Big Sur and northern Sonoma County. In places, the blight is...

<p>Sudden Oak Death is little understood, but clearly it is potentially devastating.</p> <p>They live inscrutable lives and go by impossible names. For a long time, only scientists devoted to plant diseases knew and cared about creatures called Phytophthoras.</p> <p>Then came Sudden Oak Death.</p>

<p>O'BRIEN, Ore. (AP) --  Fire isn't the only thing threatening fragile forests this summer -- firefighting itself can threaten endangered plants, or spread plant diseases.</p> <p>The Lemmingsworth Gulch Research Natural Area would be a wonderful place to cut a fire line to block a huge blaze in southwestern Oregon -- it's wet and flat, without many trees. But when fire officials suggested doing that through the 818-acre site, Forest Service ecologist Tom Atzet urged them to look elsewhere.</p>