<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><META content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" http-equiv=Content-Type></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" id=role_body bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 rightMargin=7 topMargin=7><FONT id=role_document color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV>APWG:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>During the past week the health issues related to some sort of disease in
Microstegium has become more pronounced and it may be possible that whatever is
killing stiltgrass is also impacting some of our native forest plants in West
Virginia.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I have a very limited familiarity with specifics related to individual
grass species but there does seem to be something of an extremely similar nature
impacting a common native grass, deer tongue, <EM>Panicum
clandestinum</EM>. A while ago purple lesions showed up on some
plants and now many are starting to die. The spots that show up on the
leaves start in a similar lenticular shape and form a spot that grows in
size....all things being relative, the spots are to scale for the difference in
width between the leaves of stiltgrass and deer tongue.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1252380314@aol.com" style="WIDTH: 480px; HEIGHT: 320px" vspace=5 width=480 height=320 comp_state="speed" DATASIZE="70088" ID="MA1.1252380314" ></DIV>
<DIV>In many areas there is an increasing amount of deer tongue that is
dead</DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA2.1252380314@aol.com" style="WIDTH: 480px; HEIGHT: 320px" vspace=5 width=480 height=320 comp_state="speed" DATASIZE="78335" ID="MA2.1252380314" ></DIV>
<DIV>In some stands of deer tongue where plants can be 24" tall over half
the leaves on many plants</DIV>
<DIV>are dead. In some areas there are purple lesions on every leaf
of the grass plants.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The sedge below is normally green this time of year. Most of the sick
looking </DIV>
<DIV>plants have similar spots. In some places the plants are
completely dead. The lesions are smaller</DIV>
<DIV>but appear similar to those in both deer tongue and stiltgrass.</DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA3.1252380314@aol.com" style="WIDTH: 480px; HEIGHT: 320px" vspace=5 width=480 height=320 comp_state="speed" DATASIZE="51829" ID="MA3.1252380314" ></DIV>
<DIV>I hope these images give some worthwhile background on the disease
impacting stiltgrass</DIV>
<DIV>and some of its neighbors. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA4.1252380314@aol.com" style="WIDTH: 480px; HEIGHT: 320px" vspace=5 width=480 height=320 comp_state="speed" DATASIZE="71447" ID="MA4.1252380314" ></DIV>
<DIV>Sick grass of multiple species, including stiltgrass.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In the coming days I look forward to some word on the cause of the
disease. I love what it is doing to stiltgrass but I have concerns for
some of our native plants. I guess the best we can hope for is
that it is a native disease that just hurts Microstegium worse that it does
other plants. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Sincerely,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Russ Richardson, Certified Forester</DIV>
<DIV>Crummies Creek Tree Farm</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></FONT><DIV CLASS="aol_ad_footer" ID="d01621493c550da6686ca4414f9a1cc"><br/><font style="color:black;font:normal 10pt arial,san-serif;"> <hr style="margin-top:10px"/></font></DIV></BODY></HTML>