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Beech Bark Disease

Scientific Name

Neonectria spp. (Cale et al. 2015)

Common Name

Beech bark disease (BBD)

Native To

Unknown; the fungal pathogens may possibly be native, but the insect vector, Cryptococcus fagisuga, was introduced from Europe (Kasson and Livingston 2009; Gwiazdowski et al. 2006)

Date of U.S. Introduction

First appeared in Canada during the 1890s, and in the U.S. during the 1930s (Gwiazdowski et al. 2006; Houston 1994)

Means of Introduction

The insect vector (C. fagisuga) was introduced accidentally on imported European beech saplings (Gwiazdowski et al. 2006)

Impact

Fungal disease that kills American beech trees after being attacked by the beech scale insect (C. fagisuga) (McCullough et al. 2005)

Current U.S. Distribution

Northeastern U.S. and Great Lakes Region

Beech bark disease
Image use policy

Beech bark disease symptoms

Credit

Photo by Joseph O'Brien; USDA, Forest Service

Find more images

Distribution / Maps / Survey Status

  • Alien Forest Pest Explorer (AFPE)

    • USDA. FS. Northern Research Station.

    • The Alien Forest Pest Explorer (AFPE) is an interactive web tool which provides detailed spatial data describing pest distributions and host inventory estimates for damaging, non-indigenous forest insect and disease pathogens currently established in the U.S. The database is maintained as a joint effort of Purdue University, the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station, and the U.S. Forest Service Forest Health Protection.

Videos

Selected Resources

The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.

Partnership
Federal Government
International Government
State and Local Government
Academic
Professional
Citations