- Author: Belinda Messenger-Sikes
After years of drought, we welcome rain in California. But we also recognize that rain can help spread a number of plant diseases. Rain and wind can splash bacteria and fungi from infected leaves, branches, and blossoms to uninfected parts of the tree. The fungal diseases anthracnose, peach leaf curl, scab, shot hole blight, and the bacterial disease fire blight can all be spread by rain splash. This ability to spread by water makes these diseases more common after a wet spring. With 2023 bringing quite a bit of rainfall and 2024 looking similarly wet, we want to focus on some common rain-dispersed diseases.
Anthracnose
Anthracnose affects many trees including almond, citrus, Chinese elm, and...
/h2>- Author: Anne Schellman
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
Pests have popularity contests too. We recently looked at how many visits our popular Pest Notes publication series received in 2017.
If you aren't familiar, the UC IPM Pest Notes series are science-based publications written and reviewed by experts on specific pest or management topics for California. UC IPM has 169 Pest Notes with some being more popular than others.
Here are the 20 most visited titles in 2017:
1- Carpet Beetles
For the third year in a row, carpet beetles was the most viewed of the UC IPM Pest Notes series on our website! This commonly occurring indoor pest can be accidentally brought into your home on cut flowers or through open doors...
- Author: Mary Louise Flint
- Editor: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
We've been getting calls this summer from gardeners finding fire blight damage in backyards and landscapes. Fire blight is usually associated with wet springs. Although spring 2014 wasn't particularly wet, rain occurring when apples, pears, quince, cotoneaster, and pyracantha are in bloom can induce the disease even in dry years.
The malady is called fire blight because terminals of affected branches suddenly blacken and die as if they've been scorched by fire (Figure 1). The disease is caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora, which commonly enters trees and shrubs through blossoms in rainy weather. Ideal conditions for disease development are rainy or humid weather with mild daytime temperatures (75° to...