Ash Dieback: the next Dutch Elm Disease?

Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus, a tiny fungus with a big name. And the potential to have a massive effect on the British landscape...

In Denmark, 90% (ninety percent!!) of the Ash trees have been killed by the fungus, and it has arrived in the UK.

To quote William Cobbett, "laying aside this nonsense of poets and painters, we have no tree of such various and extensive use as the Ash.  It gives us boards; materials for making instruments of husbandry; and contributes towards the making of tools of all sorts. We could not well have a wagon, a cart, a coach or a wheel  barrow, a plough, a harrow, a spade, an axe of a hammer, if we had no Ash... It therefore demands our particular attention."

With almost 1 in 3 British trees guesstimated to be an Ash, the countryside could be a very different place if Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus gets its way...