"The number of states with trees battling beech leaf disease tripled from 2019 to 2022. It is especially common in trees around Lake Erie, where the disease turned up in half of the beeches studied."
"Lovers often carve their initials in the smooth gray bark of beech trees. Now those beloved trees—which can reach nearly 40 meters tall, live up to 400 years and are among the most abundant forest trees in the Northeast and Midwestern U.S.—are increasingly threatened by beech leaf disease.
In 2012, a Greater Cleveland naturalist noticed odd, dark, leathery stripes between some veins of a few beech leaves. Since then, beech leaf disease has spread faster and faster around the lower Great Lakes and the Northeast, ravaging one of the region’s most vital trees.
In 2019, the disease was found in four states and Ontario. And by 2022, as both the disease and its detection rose, it spread to 12 states, plus Ontario and the District of Columbia. "
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