Oak Wilt Treatment

Areas we service with Oak Wilt treatments are in Central and South Texas, including but not limited to:

By County: Bandera County, Bexar County, Gillespie County, Kendall County, Kerr County, Medina County and Comal County.

By City / Town: Bandera, Pipe Creek, Kerrville, Boerne, Fredericksburg, Tarpley, Utopia, Medina, Helotes, San Antonio, Bulverde, Sisterdale, Luckenbach, Hondo and more.

(Case by case basis, call for more information)

We offer treatments for Oak Wilt and have seen good results.

But what is oak wilt?

Oak Wilt is a fungal pathogen with the scientific name Bretziella fagacearum

What does it do? It chokes off the water and nutrients that are being brought up from the roots of an infected tree in the xylem. The tree also responds by trying to compartmentalize the fungus from spreading but in so doing cuts off its own water and nutrient supply from the areas it compartmentalizes.

It is not ball moss which is a plant itself and not a parasitic one. Ball moss gets what it needs from the environment because it is a bromeliad.

The disease cycle for Oak Wilt works like this. If an infected red oak gets oak wilt, and the oak wilt pathogen has the correct timing to bloom before killing the tree, then it can bloom and create a fungal mat behind the bark which has spores. This is called a pressure pad. It basically pops the bark out a little bit.

From there the only known way those spore’s can naturally spread is by a very small beetle called a Nitidulid beetle which is a sap beetle. Nitidulids go to the Oak Wilt fungal mats and eat those spores, they may go to an open wound of a tree after that, searching for sap to drink from the xylem which is the living tissue right behind the bark. If that tree is an oak, the oak becomes infected by the spore the beetle carries in it’s mouth.

If the infected tree is a red oak that cycle starts again, if it is a live oak it won’t bloom but will almost certainly spread to another live oak if that live oak is within 100ft or less. The reason for this is live oak usually have natural root grafts or are suckers coming up from the roots of another tree. So they share resources but in this case Oak Wilt can and will almost certainly spread. It is wise to assume it will spread if 100 ft or less but even up to say 150ft.

There can be inter-species root grafts which are not as common but are still common enough to warrant treating as though they are certainly grafted.

Here is an important point, trees next to a symptomatic tree should be assumed as infected. The reason is they are likely infected in the roots at least if not some of the rest of the tree but have not exhibited symptoms in the leaves yet so it is not obvious. If these trees are not dealt with as though they have oak wilt you’ll often end doing what I call “chasing oak wilt”. It will show up in the next and then the next. If you only trees or remove trees with symptoms it’s can stretch out how long you’re dealing with oak wilt.

So what can be done? There are a few fungicides on the market that can potentially help prevent symptoms entirely as a best case scenario, or can help a tree to some extent in other cases which is probably most common, but sometimes treatments do not help at all. There are a large range of results but I have personally witnessed trees benefit greatly from being treated with those fungicides.

Injections work much better if done beforehand, but can work if done after infection. They work by the tree pulling the fungicide up through photosynthesis as water is transpiring out of the leaves.

Injecting fungicides does not necessarily get rid of or prevent oak wilt, it helps a tree to have less pressure from the fungus. So it can still spread through the tree to the trees beyond it.

That is why I say, like one of my trainers, “treat high value trees”, that is subjective from one person to the next.

The only way to really stop oak wilt is to not allow it into a tree in the first place. This means disrupting what I call “the chain” of interconnected roots. And also removing red oaks before oak wilt blooms in them.

You may have heard of trenching. Trenching is what it sounds like, Digging a trench which disrupts and disconnects the roots between trees, usually using machinery. Trenching does not work in the long run. Most trenches fail because the roots grow back, overlap, and form root grafts again. Most trenches fail within 10 years.

Roguing is a term which means to remove a plant, this can be done physically or by killing the plant. The problem with simply cutting an infect live oak down, for example, is that the trees root system almost always stays alive and stays connected to the other trees it was already connected to. Thereby Oak Wilt can continue to spread. Oak wilt cannot spread though dead tissue, it has to be in living tissue or spread by spores.

Using a bulldozer, excavator or something else to totally remove the tree and it’s connection is the way to go, alternatively you can use serious herbicides if you like.

So the big take-aways in my opinion are, inject high value trees, and remove the links to other trees where it makes sense i.e. a 150ft swath of bulldozed land separating infected areas from other areas. Sometimes people want to chase the oak wilt because the alternative is removing the trees that are too hard for us to remove emotionally or whatever, or the monetary cost is too high. Let me give you an example, a 2ft diameter tree is 85ft from an infected tree but there is only enough budget to inject the tree that is 6ft from the infected tree. Sometimes people will hope it works out. If that’s the case just know the ramifications of what the downsides are and base your decision on all the information.

Red oak should not be stored as firewood because of the fungal spores that may be there for Nitidulid beetles to retrieve. Live oak or other oak species are fine to store and burn, burning cannot spread Oak Wilt,

Call us for a consultation.

830-328-6001

210-412-5499