706 



Blight on Oak Trees. By the Rev. W. T. Bree, M.A. 



There has been during the present year all about this neighbour- 

 hood a sort of blight upon many of the oak trees, in consequence of 

 which the foliage turned colour at an unusually early period of the 

 season. By the middle of August or before, I observed that many 

 oaks had assumed as brown and autumnal an appearance as they 

 commonly present at the end of October or early in November. The 

 blight was partial only, affecting some trees, but not others. It did 

 not appear to depend on the age or vigour of the tree, or on soil or 

 situation. Both large and small oaks, old and young, thriving and 

 those in decay, in sheltered as well as exposed situations, in woods 

 and in hedge-rows, were alike subject to the disease- I have heard 

 this premature decay of the foliage attributed to honey dew ; but that 

 can hardly have been the case ; for it was common to see two oaks 

 growing side by side and in close contact, in the same hedge-row or 

 wood, one of which was turned to a rich brown or yellow, while the 

 other remained in full verdure of foliage. On examining the indivi- 

 dual leaves, they were found to be marked with irregular brown or 

 yellow blotches, principally at the apex and the lobes round the ex- 

 tremities, rather than at the base of the leaf. I did not observe that 

 the blighted leaves presented any other peculiarity, or that they had 

 been subject to the attacks of insects (galls, oak-spangles, &c.) to a 

 greater extent than those leaves which were in a healthy condition, 

 and retained their usual verdure. Has the same blight made its ap- 

 pearance in other parts of the country as well as in Warwickshire ? 

 I may remark also, that with the exception of such trees as had been 

 more or less stripped of their leaves by the grub in the spring and 

 part of the summer (in which case nature invariably makes an effort 

 to repair the loss by throwing out fresh leaves and shoots later in the 

 season), the oaks generally have made hardly any Midsummer shoot 

 this summer. Many thriving young oaks on the premises here, which 

 usually make a most vigorous Midsummer shoot of a foot or more in 

 length, have this year made next to none. I apprehend that the pre- 

 sent year will have proved a very unfavourable one for the growth of 

 oak timber, and that the concentric annual ring of wood representing 

 the year 1849, will be found to be of remarkably contracted di- 

 mensions. W. T. Bree. 

 Allesley Rectory, near Coventry, 

 October 10, 1849. 



