RINHS received the following text from the Massachusetts Introduced Pests Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and the UMass Extension Agriculture and Landscape Program, aimed at preventing the establishment of new pathogens and pests in Massachusetts. Visit their website for more information (http://www.massnrc.org/pests).

PATHOGEN ALERT: Late Blight of Potatoes and Potatoes

Late blight, a destructive disease caused by Phytophthora infestans, is a pathogen of tomato and potato plants that has recently been found in several states in the Northeast, including Maine, New York and Pennsylvania. The late blight has been identified on tomato transplants sold in big box stores and other garden centers under the brand name Bonnie Plants, and has also been found in a potato field in Pennsylvania. Because a few instances of late blight have now been detected on tomato plants in our state, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) is asking anyone growing tomatoes or potatoes to monitor them for signs of the disease, in order to prevent its further spread.

Late blight, the disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th century, is caused by a fungus-like pathogen that spreads through splashing rain or wind currents. Spores can disperse from one to several miles from the point of origin, with the infection spreading most efficiently in conditions of high moisture and temperatures ranging from 60° to 80°F.

Symptoms of late blight include small olive green or brown lesions on the upper surface of the foliage or the stems. Under moist conditions, there is a white, fuzzy growth on the underside of the leaves where the lesions occur, but the absence of this growth does not rule out late blight. Eventually the lesions turn black, leaves start to die, and then the entire plant dies.

This is a serious, destructive disease that can spread quite rapidly when conditions are right, infecting an entire field within days. Any gardeners who suspect they have tomato or potato plants infected with late blight should dig them up, place them in plastic bags, and dispose of them in the trash. Commercial growers wishing to control late blight should begin spraying fungicide immediately, even before symptoms are spotted. Spraying must continue regularly, using a product containing chlorothalonil, a state restricted fungicide which requires certification to use. Growers should be prepared to destroy the plants if the late blight starts to become severe.

For more information about late blight of potato and tomato, including diagnostic images, see the following websites:

Breaking Info from UMass Extension: http://www.umassvegetable.org/LateBlightAlertforTomatoandPotato.html
Fact sheet from Cornell University: http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/factsheets/Potato_LateBlt.htm
Photos: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/department/Facilities/lihrec/vegpath/photos/lateblight_tomato.htm
Info about systemic fungicides: http://www.nevegetable.org/index.php/crops/tomato-outdoor?start=4

If you think you have seen late blight of potato and tomato in Rhode Island, contact the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Division of Agriculture, 235 Promenade Street, Providence, RI 02908-5767, (401) 222-2781, http://www.dem.ri.gov/programs/bnatres/agricult/index.htm.

If you like the Rhode Island BioBlitz (and who doesn’t?), why not try out the a Massachusetts BioBlitz (which FYI they call ‘Biodiversity Day’). Naturalist Peter Alden is organizing the BioDiversity Day event in Walden Woods in Concord, Mass., on July 4 and he’s looking for a few good naturalists. The event is being held on the anniversary of the first Biodiversity Day, in 1998, and also on the 164th anniversary of Thoreau settling at Walden Pond. The event is also a celebration of naturalist E.O. Wilson’s 80th birthday and he’ll be participating (what out ants!). It’s a great chance to meet this great man. The event is hosted by the Walden Woods Project and has around 100 biologists and helpers signed up so far. If you would like to participate you must contact Peter Alden and talk to him about what you would do, when, and where. They are particularly interested in photographers.

There will be gatherings for meals and forming parties Fri eve (the 3rd), and breakfast, lunch and dinner on the 4th. They still have room for more experts in most fields esp. fungi, lichens, mosses, grasses, sedges and most invertebrates. There are folk coming in from Connecticut, NY, Maine and all over Massachusetts.

Please see waldenbiodiversity.com for details and call Peter Alden at 978 369-5768.
The event is sponsored by the Walden Woods Project along with the Minute Man National Historical Park.

One thing that RINHS is here for is to encourage the practice of taxonomy: connect those with taxonomic expertise with those interested in learning and otherwise to facilitate by preserving systematic collections, maintaining a reference library, and organizing and publishing the results.

All this is useful (necessary, in fact) if you want to know what’s going on in Rhode Island’s environment, but it is also our small contribution to improving the prospects for taxonomy generally. Hopefully, as she picks up her nobel prize in biology, the next great taxnomist will cite the encouragement she received at BioBlitz! Here’s a very interesting assessment of the field of taxonomy, its importance and prospects, that was brought to my attention by Lisa Gould (my predecessor as Director for the newbies in the audience).

Link to taxonomy article in The Scientist.

Here’s an interesting news item from Maryland. They are experimenting with goats to mow highway verge in a wetland inhabited by bog turtles. Mowers would be tough on the little fellas, you see (the turtles, not the goats, well they’d be tough on goats too but they’re fast enough to get out of the way). Link to news article at TerraDaily

I’ve always thought there’s something not quite right about using mowers to restore grasslands created by colonial era animal husbandry. If we’re managing grasslands for rare plants and animals that found homes there in the colonial past, we should use authentic management techniques or risk failure…not all lands of grass are grasslands. The only problem (not the ONLY problem, of course but one main problem) with using “authentic” grassland restoration methods is the recent advent of coyotes throughout our area. In the old days, sheep were choice mowers and once southern New England was predator free they could be loosely managed on land with poor soils, lots of rocks, or that were too steep for other agricultural pursuits. Coyotes have forced a profound change sheep husbandry making them not the idea land clearence agent they once were. They have to be tightly fenced, brought in at night, actively guarded, etc, all of which increases the cost and decreases the likelihood that a land owner will be able to sustain the effort long enough to have the desired result. Hopefully we will learn more about making and maintaining grasslands that work like the grasslands of yore with livestock that is coyote resistant—cows, goats, llamas, and donkeys. A friend of mine once suggested buffalo and elk as a good mix of grazers and browsers for maintaining coyote infested grasslands. He might have been right but I think he also was biased as he was an old big game hunter. Each non-sheep alternative has ups and downs and characteristics of its activity or care that may effect the resultant grassland ecosystem in subtle ways. We have quite a lot to learn before we can be successful Colonial era farmers.