Say Goodbye To The Red Bay Tree

If You Haven't Already Done So, Go Outside And Hug Your Red Bay Trees, Because They Are Doomed.

Doomed, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
Let's not sugar coat this.
This is bad.
This just another of far too many invasive, nonnative introductions to Florida. This one, an exotic fungus spread by an exotic beetle, is possibly an extinction event for the beautiful, (and previously taken for granted by me), Red Bay Trees (Persea borbonia).

This is a depressingly common view on most of our rural Levy county roads. A wall of green punctuated by dead and dying Red Bays.

The Red Bay Ambrosia beetle, a tiny Asian insect only about 1/16 of an inch long infects a healthy tree with a fungus, that the beetle then feeds upon.

The Red Bay has no natural defense against either the Ambrosia Beetle or the fungus since the two villains in this tale are from Asia.

Essentially, the beetle inoculates the Red Bay tree with the fungus, creating a food source for the insect to feed upon.
As the fungus spreads, it clogs the vascular tissues causing  the Red Bay to wilt and die ... often within a week or so of infection.

This is what an infected Red Bay cambium looks like.
A cross cut on a healthy Red Bay has creamy white wood up to the bark layer.

The Ambrosia Beetles may have arrived here in wood product shipments and have been moving through the South rapidly in the past decade.
From my vantage point in the wild and rural nature coast area, it's been a dramatic sea-change in the local forests.

On my own property, my beloved Pure Florida HeadQuarters (PFHQ), I see brown everywhere I go.

Take for instance the photo below. The crispy brown leaves above my head are the lowest branches of a once beautiful Red Bay that I thought would always be here ... long after me.

Today, the first day of 2015, I cut that tree down.
The wood will all be burned in our fire pit, one small and mostly meaningless gesture to ... well, to at LEAST NOT spread it.
The one thing we all want to do is not transport cut Red Bay ANYWHERE.

I loved this tree, loved the fragrant leaves, the evergreen nature of it, and the way it leaned WAY out from where it started under a bunch of mature oaks.

Poor thing.

You can see how this tree frantically produced new, green shoots down around the base, but eventually those will succumb too.

In the past, I hacked at it's lower branches with the machete to keep my trail and gopher tortoise area open, never thinking much about a gentle touch. It was just another Red Bay and there were a blue million of them here at PFHQ.

Now, I'm pretty sure that except for young saplings popping up from last year's seeds, there probably won't be any Red Bays on my property by the end of 2015.

That really bothers me, but this will run it's course and there doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop it.

There are other things at risk here too.
The beetle and fungus combo also attack Red Bay relatives like Sassafras and the Avocado.
And then there are the native North American ecological relationships that have evolved over thousands of years ...

When the Red Bays vanish, the food they provide in the form of berries and leaves for everything from birds to bears to butterflies will go with them.


For the Palomedes Swallowtail butterfly, the Red Bay is the main larval food. As the trees disappear, so will the Palomedes Swallowtail ... which just happens to be the primary pollinator of the Pine Lily.

...sigh

So, the loss of the Red Bay may result in the loss of other organisms too.
Sounds corny to say it, but you know you're thinking it ... "It's all connected."
Not a very cheery New Years message, I know.

Ever the optimist, I'm hoping that somewhere in the millions of Red Bay seedlings pushing up into a dangerous new world, there may be a few with just the right DNA bouillabaisse to fight back with a bit of good ol'fashioned genetic resistance.

Time will tell, and on December 31, 2015, I will post an update of the Red Bay situation here at PFHQ.

CUBANS INVADE CEDAR KEY! EVERYONE GRAB A ZIPLOC BAG!

The tiny island of Cedar Key, Florida has been invaded by Cubans, not by the good people of Cuba, but by their frogs.

Earlier this year, mysterious tadpoles showed up in an open rain barrel near our Cedar Key School Aquaponics System. I noticed a raft of frog eggs one Spring day when I stopped to feed the gambusia minnows that live in the barrel for mosquito control.
I assumed they were tree frog tadpoles since to lay eggs in the 50 gallon barrel they would have to climb up the side just to get to the water.
I wasn't thinking Cuban Tree Frogs though.

However, when these large and unusual tadpoles showed up, I became suspicious. Every native tree frog tadpole I've ever seen has been tiny and dark. These were so radically different, that I had the students catch them. We then placed them in a tank with an always hungry bluegill who dispatched them post haste.

Last year's Environmental Science class, which is this year's Biology class, put out tree frog monitoring "traps" last year after an adult Cuban tree frog turned up in our aquaponics system.

We've monitored these sporadically, but have only caught a few natives.

So, it figures that with about 10 PVC tree frog monitoring traps spread around school, the second adult Cuban tree frog turned up in a flower pot in the aquaponic system.

We were down at the lab and I had groups of kids doing various aquaculture related jobs. This always looks a little like controlled chaos, as multiple groups need me for this or that and there's a lot of "Mr. P, what about ..." and "Mr. P, where is...", anyway, you get the picture, it's busy.

Still, some sounds cut through the cacophony and a squeal is one of those sounds. From the group planting lettuce outside in the aquaponics system, there was a squeal and I heard the word "frog".
So, of course I went to investigate, already suspecting what I would find.

Sure enough, the kids had found a Cuban tree frog in a stack of 3 inch black plastic flower pots. It was a little cold shocked on that chilly morning and pretty easy to capture.
I explained what he was and why we could not let him go.
When I got to the part about euthanizing him, there were some "Ohhh, ahhhh poor thing", but the lessons on invasive species must have sunk in, because they seemed to understand.
Actually I'm glad they have compassion for the individual frog, while at the same time realizing the need to control invasives like the Cuban tree frog.

That's where I am too.
I love frogs, love their sounds, their big eyes, their palette of colors and sizes.
But this frog had to die and the most humane way for that to happen was a trip to the freezer in a Ziploc bag.

Besides the size and tan color, another characteristic that makes the Cuban different from our natives is the size of the sticky toe pads.
They're huge!
Every time I see them my brain flips back to the 1953 "War of The Worlds" movie.

The "hand" of a dead Martian invader from the 1953 movie ... see what I mean?

Are these really from Cuba, or are they from Olympus Mons?
One wonders ...

To help YOU identify the Cuban, here's a size reference photo.
They are big for tree frogs and mostly tan ... not a common color with our natives.

A dorsal view.

And finally, an extended view.

There is some yellow around the thigh and groin area.

Keep an eye out for these invaders and if you catch one, be strong and euthanize it.

You can get much more information and even send in photos for an official identification BEFORE YOU KILL A TREE FROG at this excellent University of Florida website.

...and keep watching the skies.