'Invasive Species'! : Emerald Ash Borer and Chestnut Blight
Leaf Brix refractometers, paramagnetic soil, food control
I’ve been on my homestead for almost four years now, felling or sawing my trees and splitting firewood, trying to be self-sufficient and working with the abundance of nature. Immersed every day among all the plants, fungi, bugs, birds, and other wildlife, you see patterns more clearly, whereas before you never even noticed the daffodils blooming in late winter.
You notice that younger perilla leaves in the garden never have blemishes, and same for any other garden plant. You notice that turkey tail and wood ears grow only on dead logs or branches, so no arborist thinks that these fungi sucked the life out of these trees. I had already written about the breakdown of dying matter in this article:
Emerald Ash Borer
None of the firewood in the picture above is ash, but I do have a few white ash trees, like these two young darker trees next to the white oaks and hollies:
I haven’t seen any shiny emerald ash borers though, what they tell us is the ‘invasive species’ ‘from Asia’ that is ‘killing off’ millions of ash trees in North America and other parts of the world, like Moscow. But like I mentioned, bugs don’t eat healthy plants- they are utilizing decaying matter- for example, termites, dung beetles, fruit flies, roaches. I see beetles all the time in decaying logs- they’re designed to break down decomposing wood.
Ash is one of the most common landscaping trees in urban areas and thus is heavily sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, of course. From https://www.arborday.org/tree-resources/how-fight-emerald-ash-borer :
In urban areas, ash has been one of the nation’s most popular trees for planting along streets, in parks, and in shopping center parking lots. When Dutch elm disease decimated huge numbers of our nation’s most graceful street trees, ash was often the tree of choice for its replacement. In some communities, up to 40% of the inventoried trees turn out to be ash species or cultivars.
We have entire industries revolving around urban landscaping. Think of all of the mulch, wood chips, compost, fertilizers, manure, petrochemical sprays, mowing equipment, and other products sold in the landscaping industry throughout the U.S. And people know that glyphosate/Roundup on lawns increases non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma rates in dogs, as well as in humans and other life forms. We hear that mulch should not be piled up too high along a tree’s trunk, but that’s what you see everywhere you go, since they need to sell millions of bags of mulch everywhere. We see unnecessarily wide medians or tracts between the curb and the sidewalk, requiring more gas and spraying. For whatever reasons, trees that are able to withstand an urban landscaping environment are trees like Callery pear, maple, crepe myrtle, and pin oak.
This paper states that in early 2002, the emerald ash borer was “determined to be associated with extensive decline and mortality of ash trees in Detroit, Michigan” as well as Windsor, Ontario nearby. Notice the wording- ‘associated’, not caused.
According to https://wiki.bugwood.org/Archive:Ash/Introduction, “Because the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar (L.), rarely feeds on ashes, ash species are often favored for planting in both forest and urban settings in the Northeastern States.” That page also states that “An estimated one-third of the ash trees larger than pole size contain some heart-rot.” I’m assuming they want us to think the larvae of the emerald ash borer in the outer bark eventually leads to heart-rot in the middle of trees.
When I chop firewood, I use mostly trees that have already died and fallen, like the red oak above. I try to peel off the bark in order to season or dry the wood faster. If you look at firewood with the bark intact, the layer between the outer and inner barks will often get mushy and probably support beetle larvae. This moisture would promote creosote deposits in your chimney, which needs to be scraped off or else it could cause a chimney fire (this is generally true, but depends on many factors- my experience is that after four winters of constant use, there was hardly any buildup when the chimney sweepers came.)
Above is another red oak round that had fallen after a summer thunderstorm. I peeled off some of the outer bark to show some larval tracks, or what they term galleries. But anyone that works with trees, such as arborists, knows that these larvae occur only on dead or dying bark. Related to this, many fallen trees, once you start sawing near the base of the trunk, have decaying inner bark- hence why it fell. The opportunistic ants, beetles, and other bugs inside of these decaying cavities are not the cause of the tree’s death. The tree started to weaken and die from old age, lack of sunlight, toxic conditions, etc.. Likewise, when you walk in the woods, the woodpecker holes occur only on dead trees, right, since the larvae they are looking for are lodged in the decaying wood. I sometimes see or hear woodpeckers pecking on a live holly, the side of my house, or even the stair railing, which is surprising, but they move on since the larvae live in the dead trees.
Back to the emerald ash borer, this paper from Michigan State, shows that scientists were testing the effectiveness of pesticides (no kidding!) in killing the emerald ash borer very early on after it was ‘determined’ in ‘early 2002’ to be ‘associated with’ these shiny beetles:
Preliminary results of adult bioassays indicated that bidrin was highly toxic to adults. For example, on June 25, beetles caged for five days with foliage from bidrin trees sustained 100 percent mortality. Even 38 days after injection, more than 90 percent of beetles died when caged on foliage from bidrin trees for five days.
So they spray what they think are beetle-infested trees with pesticides, further causing damage, which allows more beetles to feed off of the dying trees.
There are very few people willing to publically challenge the establishment belief that a beetle is destroying millions of ash trees. In my research, I’ve only found one expert discussing alternate explanations- the entomologist, Thomas Dykstra. I think one reason he’s able to do this is because he owns his own consulting company and is not affiliated with a university, government, corporation, etc., so he can’t get fired from straying off course. Here is the section of the video where Dykstra discusses emerald ash borers, which I have transcribed below:
…you can see the left side is dead, the right side is doing quite well, and it's putting bark on the outside, and what do you see off to the left side? You see a lot of woodpecker holes. Those woodpecker holes are going after… beetles. They love these larvae because they're big and juicy… but you will notice that the woodpeckers are not attacking the right part of the tree. It's the same tree but they're only attacking the dead part… We get obviously different Brix readings from them…while I was at the ESA [Entomological Society of America] meeting in San Diego, there's this talk, “Living with the emerald ash borer: Larger, older trees are attacked first.”… Unhealthy trees that are starting to go downhill are attacked first…most of the ash trees in the northern part of our country are between 150 and 250 years old. Many of these trees are simply dying. It's okay, it happens. The emerald ash borer is moving in, taking out the tree as it should be, and so we get people right now who now see an Emerald Ash Borer attacking a tree and will take a chainsaw and will completely take out all the trees within a 50 to 100 foot radius of that tree even if they're healthy, and even if they're not being attacked. We have killed far more- it's not even close- far more ash trees with our chainsaws than the emerald ash borer has, so take a good look at those figures about how many ash trees we have missed and lost and know that most of the fault is our own.
Here is the synopsis from the 2007 Tara Eberhart presentation that Dykstra referenced in the above quote and video:
The exotic emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) is currently established in Michigan and some surrounding states. At high population densities, all green, black, and white ash trees are apparently susceptible to attack and can be expected to die. The first record of this insect in Upper Michigan was from Brimley State Park in the fall of 2005 as part of an ongoing detection survey. Eradication efforts involving removal of ash trees provided the opportunity to remove discs from trees for dendrochronology analyses. We determined if tree age, tree size, or tree growth affected the likelihood of the occurrence of emerald ash borer larvae in an ash tree in the early stages of infestation, when the population density is still relatively low. Both non-linear regression and ranked tree data showed that tree age and tree size were significantly related to the presence of EAB larvae, with the larger, older trees more likely to be infested. Tree growth (mean basal area increment) was also lower on attacked trees. Since 1995, trees attacked by EAB had consistently lower growth rates, suggesting there are other factors that reduced growth and may have predisposed them to EAB attack.
Dykstra further explains in that presentation that the food and agriculture industries, such as the wine industry, are very familiar with the Brix score as a measure of a plant’s health. One simply needs to squeeze some plant sap onto the lens of a Brix refractometer, such as this $28 one on Amazon, to determine the sucrose concentration. Adolf Brix invented the hydrometer to more accurately measure sucrose content of grape juice for the wine industry, but industries and gardeners now use a refined version called the refractometer.
Here’s a demonstration of the Brix sucrose level for garden plants, starting with a blackberry:
Here is Graeme Sait explaining Brix refractometers and the role of photosynthesis in plants, in which the synthesized sugars feed the roots and microbes. The microbes then fix nitrogen and provide better absorption of minerals and nutrients for the plant, which then builds bigger leaves, nature’s solar panels, to photosynthesize even more sugars for the roots, microbes, and the rest of the plant:
For technical details about how a refractometer measures sucrose or total suspended solids (TSS) levels, this is a good page: https://bionutrient.net/site/bionutrient-rich-food/brix.
Sait says a soil pH of 6.4 is optimal for the minerals and other nutrients to be absorbed by the plant, so slightly acidic, which then allows the plant to produce more sugars, which means a higher Brix score. He says calcium is one of the biggest factors in changing the soil pH, followed by phosphorous. Therefore, in order to get higher Brix scores, i.e., healthier, pest-resistant plants, you need optimal minerals and the microbes that help with the mineral transport up the plant. Leaf Brix scores higher than 6 will correspond with tastier, more pungent plants because of the increased secondary metabolites like flavonoids and terpenes. Flavonoids give you flavors! The insects sense these vibrations with their antennae and other organs.
Here are some garden insects and what they might indicate from Betsy’s Substack, This Changes Everything:
If your plants have aphids, they are in very bad shape and may not be able to recover. If they have sucking insects like stink bugs or leaf hoppers, they are less severely compromised, but still near death’s door. If they have attracted chewing insects, such as caterpillars, leaf miners, or Japanese beetles, their health level is higher but still well below optimal. And if it is insects in the grasshopper family that like to chew on your plants, they are just below or right at the minimum healthy range.
Also, as Dykstra explains, the digestive system of insects cannot break down the strong bonds that link complex sugars like cellulose unless the plant is in the declining stage of its life cycle. Of course you also need the right amounts of Sunlight, air, and water for a healthy plant:
At around 5:30 of his video, Sait mentions the work of Philip Callahan, whose work demonstrates that insect antennae detect the infrared energy of plants to determine whether to feed on it or not. I looked into his research, and he’s definitely onto something. Callahan also made the connection between paramagnetic, well-mineralized soil and high production gardens. In this interview, coincidentally by Sait, Callahan believes that ancient towers around the world, such as the dozens of mysterious Irish round towers, were used like antennae to resonate energies in the meter wavelength range for the benefit of surrounding plants as well as for the inhabitants of these areas.
From http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/buildings/Irish-Tower.html:
Writing in his book, Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions, Callahan discusses research which indicates that the round towers may have been designed, constructed and utilized as huge resonant systems for collecting and storing meter-long wavelengths of magnetic and electromagnetic energy coming from the earth and skies. Based on fascinating studies of the forms of insect antenna and their capacity to resonate to micrometer-long electromagnetic waves, Professor Callahan suggests that the Irish round towers (and similarly shaped religious structures throughout the ancient world) were human-made antenna which collected subtle magnetic radiation from the sun and passed it on to monks meditating in the tower and plants growing around the tower's base.
The round towers were able to function in this way because of their form and also because of their materials of construction. Of the sixty-five towers, twenty-five were built of limestone, thirteen of iron-rich, red sandstone, and the rest of basalt, clay slate or granite - all minerals which have paramagnetic properties and can thus act as magnetic antenna and energy conductors. Callahan further states that the mysterious fact of various towers being filled with rubble for portions of their interiors was not random but rather may have been a method of "tuning" the tower antenna so that it more precisely resonated with various cosmic frequencies.
Equally intriguing, Callahan shows that the geographical arrangement of the round towers throughout the Irish countryside mirrors the positions of the stars in the northern sky during the time of winter solstice.
So now that we have discussed what’s needed for good soil and thus a healthy plant, an obvious question would be, what are the Brix scores for healthy ash tree leaves compared to leaves from ash trees infested by emerald ash borers? Are there any scientific papers showing Brix measurements for ash trees? I reached out to Dykstra by email, but he does not know of any papers with such data! And I haven’t found any either! It’s a simple test, so what is there to hide? If an ash tree measures low on the Brix score, you can predict that the tree will start hosting larvae. But if it measures normal or high on the Brix score and still gets infested with larvae, then it’s doing something inconsistent with what other people are measuring for other plants. I will test my ash trees myself when I order my Brix refractometer.
Another question is, if the EABs are exploding in population, feeding off of tens of millions of ash trees, why aren’t birds and other predators feasting on this bounty to curtail the population? The stock reply is that predators haven’t had time to adjust to the new invasive species, as if this is the only such invasive species. Why is that, or are there many other invasive species always causing havoc in unprepared, unadaptive species? People have misinterpreted nature, misinterpreted the concept of Logos, the logic of nature, in the beginning.
There is just no discussion from other entomologists or government foresters of topics like what I have presented so far, but instead the remedy promoted by these establishment organizations is to spray ash stands with industrial pesticides such as: Imidacloprid, Dinotefuran, Emamectin Benzoate, Azadirachtin, Bifenthrin, Cyfluthrin, Acephate, Clothianidin, Permethrin, etc.
These insecticide products are so effective that we are still here talking about an invasive epidemic of millions of dying ash trees from this beetle! Obviously, it is working, so don’t let up, and keep spraying! This indoctrination gets passed down to small scale arborists, so when you search this topic, you get unanimous conformity about what measures to take while they read from a script and how they think it came here ‘on wood packing material’ from East Asia back in the ‘90s, etc. Everyone gets their cut and makes a livelihood, drilling ash tree trunks and injecting pesticide drenched diaphragms in the drilled holes that travel up the tree. As the arborist says in the two minute video below, it does not damage the trees, just the larvae! Btw, did you hear the latest problem-reaction-solution trick with cow farts- you know, the main reason for climate change? The solution they’re presenting for this is some chemical additive in cattle feed called Bovaer, which causes health issues to the cattle and to consumers... money, control, compliance.
One more aside before we move onto chestnut blight, and it’s not really an aside, since the level of glyphosate, let alone all of the other toxins, in the environment is probably enough to cause damage to plants everywhere: Dykstra explains that glyphosate prevents monoculture GMO crops from scoring higher than 10 on the leaf Brix score, because it inhibits EPSP synthase, an enzyme involved in the shikimate pathway, which leads to the synthesis of the amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine. And like I mentioned about higher Brix scores corresponding with increased flavonoids, terpenes, etc., we all know GMO corn and other big ag monocultures are dull and flavorless. It’s an illusion of eating nourishing food.
Chestnut Blight
Now let’s focus on one of the worst ecological disasters in recorded history: the complete wipeout of the billions of American chestnut trees along the eastern United States from around the early 1900s to the late 1930s. They tell us the culprit is the chestnut blight ‘fungal disease’ first ‘identified’ at the Bronx Zoo in 1904. How convenient, at the Bronx Zoo!
Chestnut trees were the keystone trees of the Appalachias and provided nutritious food and in-demand lumber. Here’s an account from an 87-year old Margaret Miller:
In the fall, if you got along first after a windy night, the road'd just be covered in them. There's a little store, end of the road up there, and you could bring the chestnuts down there and sell them for pencils or candy, or they'd buy them. They was in burrs. You know, they was in a big burr. They'd open up when they got ripe. On a windy night, they'd really pepper down.
Let’s think this through. They say this Chestnut Blight is exclusive to the chestnut genera, Castanea. But if this fungus actually killed practically all of the estimated four billion chestnut trees in the Eastern U.S. by the end of the 1930s, where is this fungus now? What kind of strategy is this, where a parasite kills off its host completely, thus wiping itself out? What other ‘parasites’ utilize this extreme strategy, any? For these extreme species, how can this type of trait be passed on when they didn’t survive to propagate this trait? What evolutionary forces would promote this game of chicken where the parasite is less able to propagate itself when the hosts are mostly gone? Wouldn’t evolutionary forces promote a more symbiotic relationship with its hosts?
Here is what ChatGPT answers when I asked “what are some other examples like chestnut blight where the parasite wipes out its host?” It answers with Dutch elm disease (remember, it was a popular landscaping tree in urban areas), white pine blister rust, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (in frogs and other amphibians), hemlock woolly adelgid, Sudden Oak Death from Oomycete (Phytophthora ramorum), and laurel wilt. We should all be quick with the fallacy of this list, so I asked again: “you actually did not list relevant examples, since hemlock, laurel, elm, oak all are still here.” ChatGPT then does its usual apologies and lists (besides chestnut blight) the passenger pigeon, Gros Michel banana cultivar, Hawaiian tree snails (Achatinella spp. and others), and guava trees for certain regions. So these four out of the millions of species are the best examples the establishment has of a parasite species wiping out its host species (actually more, since it said the flatworms killing off ‘other’ tree snail species, but then the Gros Michel is not a species of banana). But it even says ‘overhunting and habitat loss were primary drivers of extinction’ for the passenger pigeon, and I had already known why they favored the boring Cavendish cultivar over Gros Michel, and I still eat guava! I guess the fungus that causes chestnut blight, Cryphonectria parasitica, is the king of all Kamikaze species, wherever you are these days! You were able to gobble up 25 square miles of chestnut stands PER DAY for 35 years to complete your task (315k square miles of chestnut forests divided by (35 years X 365 days)). For a simpler calculation, 4 billion chestnut trees divided by 12,775 days (from 1904 to 1939) is 313,111 trees destroyed PER DAY.
2. Passenger Pigeon (Parasites and Human Factors)
Host: Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius).
Parasites and Diseases: While overhunting and habitat loss were primary drivers of extinction, some evidence suggests avian diseases and parasites (e.g., Newcastle disease) exacerbated their decline.
Outcome: The species became extinct in 1914.
3. Gros Michel Banana and Panama Disease
Host: Gros Michel banana cultivar.
Pathogen: Fusarium wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense), specifically Tropical Race 1.
Outcome: This disease effectively eliminated commercial cultivation of the Gros Michel banana by the mid-20th century, necessitating its replacement with the resistant Cavendish variety.
4. Hawaiian Snails and Parasitic Flatworms
Host: Native Hawaiian tree snails (Achatinella spp. and others).
Parasites: Introduced flatworms (Platydemus manokwari).
Outcome: Many species of these snails have been driven to extinction by parasitism and predation.
5. Guava Trees in Certain Regions
Host: Guava trees in tropical regions.
Parasite: Guava rust (Puccinia psidii).
Outcome: In some areas, guava populations have been devastated, particularly in ecosystems where guava is a keystone or significant species.
Did you notice anything ChatGPT did not mention? So I asked, “what viruses have wiped out its hosts?” And the response was:
Viruses that have completely wiped out their host species are relatively rare because most viruses depend on their hosts for replication and survival. However, some viruses have driven host populations to the brink of extinction or eradicated specific populations. Here are notable examples:
1. Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease (TFTD)
Nature: Although technically not a virus but a transmissible cancer, this disease behaves similarly to a pathogen.
Impact: Has caused severe declines (over 80%) in Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) populations. The disease could potentially lead to localized extinction in areas without intervention.
2. Myxomatosis in Rabbits
Virus: Myxoma virus.
Impact: Introduced in Australia in the 1950s to control invasive European rabbit populations (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Initially caused over 90% mortality but did not completely eradicate rabbits, as resistance developed in hosts over time.
3. Ebola and Primate Populations
Virus: Ebola virus.
Impact: Ebola outbreaks have decimated populations of gorillas (Gorilla spp.) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), with mortality rates exceeding 90% in some groups. While not extinct, local populations have been severely reduced, threatening species survival.
4. Rinderpest Virus
Host: Cattle and other ungulates.
Impact: Rinderpest was eradicated in 2011 through vaccination campaigns. While the virus itself did not cause extinction of its hosts, it wiped out many local populations of cattle and wild ungulates historically.
5. Smallpox in Indigenous Human Populations
Virus: Variola virus.
Impact: Smallpox eradicated entire communities of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, Australia, and Pacific islands following European colonization, as these populations had no prior immunity.
6. Chytrid Fungus (Bd) in Amphibians
Agent: While not a virus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis acts in a way similar to viral pathogens.
Impact: Has caused the extinction of multiple amphibian species globally by attacking keratin in their skin.
Viruses that completely eradicate their host often face their own extinction unless they can find alternative hosts or reservoirs. Let me know if you’d like additional details or specific case studies!
Numbers 1 and 6 are not viruses, and rinderpest was eradicated with vaccine programs they claim, and they want you to believe that an ‘Ebola virus’ wiped out 90% of some gorilla and chimp groups, and that a ‘smallpox virus’ wiped out most of the Native American population, and that a ‘myxomatosis virus’ wiped out Australian rabbits, although as I’ve detailed in my article on the subject, what killed the rabbits were all of the new organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) on the market that farmers were using. And the rabbit population bounced back- they’re rabbits. So 0/6.
Well, regardless, here is a Chinese chestnut bounty from Edible Acres farm in NY, a favorite channel of mine. Apparently, the Chinese variety of chestnut trees are immune from chestnut blight:
Here is a quote and a screenshot from a book called Chestnut Blight from 1930, explaining how chestnut trees with this blight could still be used for various industry purposes:
The problem of utilizing the chestnut timber from the 33,000,000 acres of the southern Appalachians where the species represents 25 per cent of the stand is one phase of the chestnut blight problem which the United States Forest Service and State and extension forestry departments are endeavoring to solve.
Chestnut lends itself to the most varied usage of any timber species growing in the southern Appalachians. It is already used for extract wood, lumber, poles, ties, mine props, piles, fence posts, cord wood, and pulpwood... Its increased use for sheathing framing interior work and most of all for the manufacture of boxes packing cases and crates would do much to conserve other timber supplies.
And regardless of blight or not, they still established at least 21 chestnut extraction sites just in the southern Appalachians to supply half of the vegetable tannins in the U.S. from the tree with the “most varied usage of any timber species growing in the southern Appalachians.” This tannin extraction industry is “by far the largest consumer of chestnut.” I pass by electrical poles with tan tannin around the base. Ironically, the tannin supposedly offers antifungal protection for the pole. This here, you have the industrial growth of America in the early 20th Century with all the tannins for railroad tie rods and telephone poles everywhere. At the same time, you get rid of such a nutritious and free food resource for Appalachia and everywhere.
It is unfortunate that billions of chestnut trees that provided free food for so many was completely devastated, isn’t it? Even assuming 100 million people in the U.S. at that time, that’s around 40 chestnut trees per person, which is literally tons of free food! In this interview,
Thomas Klak says:
There are a lot of villages in Appalachia that went belly up when the chestnuts were decimated with the fungal blight. That was a key ingredient of their economies.
…They can go and collect quantities in bags, bring them to the country store, buy their shoes for school, their school books, trade them for everything in late September. A major source of cash for these communities. And then those chestnuts would be moved by train to the big cities and then you'd have the chestnut vendors on the streets, like you still now see in Europe and in Asia, because those species of chestnut have survived.
As an avid wild food forager and proponent, I’m interested in these types of events and strategies, where power and resources are stripped from the people. We know they don’t ever want free energy innovations to gain traction, but let’s concentrate just on food-related ways they strip you of power. They make sure to go after raw milk, don’t they? There’s talk of restrictions against owning chickens, and even restrictions with home gardening. Gardeners are encouraged to grow annuals but not perennials. There’s always warnings about wild mushrooms. My plant identification apps are all overly cautious about the edibility of something, since they do not want to be liable. Everything in our consumer society is geared towards subsidizing or supporting the highly commodifiable, long shelf-life products like white flour, white sugar, GMO corn, soybeans, etc. Just corn, soy, and wheat crops make up over 70% of all U.S. crops. Corn and soy fields are practically all I ever drive past. The subliminal messaging prevalent in our society is that broccoli is bad and jellybeans are good, that raw milk operations need to be shut down, that raw honey might cause botulism, whatever that is, in infants under a year old, that ratfish liver be banned. And have you noticed how the most nutritious parts of meat are not really sold to consumers, like liver, pancreas (sweetbread), heart, kidneys, gizzards, bone marrow, cartilage, etc.? The organs are what lions eat first, with the alpha usually eating the liver first.
Even the foraging Meetup group I’m a part of is run by someone who thinks autumn olives and wineberries are invasive species! Autumn olives are so abundant and nutritious! Neighbors on Nextdoor.com complain about their invasive weeds when they could just be eating them, or don’t realize that ‘invasive’ type plants serve a function, such as dandelions loosening compacted soil and remineralizing the depleted soil. When I tell people you can eat carrot greens or strawberry leaves or all squash rinds, they are surprised, so why is so much nutritious food thrown out? Ribes fruits that grow wild like gooseberries and currants were banned, according to https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/gooseberry:
in the early 1900s, the growing of gooseberry and related currants became federally banned because of a fungal disease called white pine blister rust, a deadly disease for all species of white pines…
In 1966, the federal ban was shifted onto individual state jurisdiction, and most states (except some northern states) once again allowed the production of gooseberries and currants (USDA, Forest Service, n.d.). Currently, some states still ban all Ribes species, or enforce a permit system for the production of Ribes, while others only ban Ribes species that are not resistant to white pine blister rust.
Not just the European staples, currants and gooseberries, but Japanese barberries, as well as all of these other great plants, at least for the state of Massachusetts, but other states have similar lists:
Another example, from Leuren Moret’s letter to Congress urging action on uranium pollution in Native American lands- she states that the authorities in Nevada burned Pinyon pine trees, preventing the Native Americans tribes there from a source of traditional food:
Bill Mollison describes the prevalence of wild foods long ago, from his course, ‘Forests in Permaculture’, as quoted in Gavin Mounsey’s article on oak trees:
“From the forest, they derived all their bread, all their butter. The butter was made out of beechnuts — highly selected beechnuts. There are still casks and casks of beechnut butter in Europe, buried in the peat, still in good condition. All the bread and cakes in Tuscany and Sardinia and a few other places are still made from chestnuts. Corsican muffins are made of chestnuts, not wheat flour. All the bread was made from the trees, and all the butter was made from the trees. There are your basics.
In your American southwest, the pinion pine nut is a staple Indian food. In one day a family of six can gather thirty bushels of pine nuts, and that’s a year’s supply. In South America, six trees support a family of Indians. Those great supports are a source of staple food. One white oak, in its year, will provide staple food for about six families. A good old American chestnut — how many pounds did we get off one of those trees? At least four or five hundred pounds. There’s a couple of families’ food for a year, with no hacking and digging and sowing and reaping and threshing. Just dash out in autumn, gather the nuts and stack them away. […]
When the forests were managed for their yield and their food equivalence, they were highly managed. Now there are only a few remnants of this in the world, in Portugal, and southern France. In Portugal, you can still find highly selected, highly managed oak trees, often grafted, and olives. The pigs and the goats and the people live together in a very simple little 4,000 yard area in which nobody is racking around with plows. In that economic situation, there is no need for an industrial revolution.
A few of these tree ecologies still remain up on steep mountain slopes, where it has been difficult to get up there to cut the trees down for boat building and industrial uses. The whole of Europe, Poland, and the northern areas once were managed for a tree crop, and the forest supplied all the needs of the people.”
So what are some alternate theories out there besides a fungal blight? Here’s a quote from https://www.starkbros.com/growing-guide/article/the-solution-for-chestnut-decline that provides an alternate explanation from blight, similar to what Dykstra expressed about the clearcutting of ash trees to stop the spread of the beetle culprit:
Mistakes were made in attempting to manage the blight; loggers destroyed resistant trees in an effort to stop the blight spread, depriving them of the chance to reproduce healthy stock. "Devastation" is not an overstatement: today, the number of American Chestnuts trees east of the Mississippi with a diameter larger than two feet is now less than 100.
Here’s a quote from https://athensscienceobserver.com/2016/06/16/them-old-sweet-ones-remembering-and-reintroducing-the-american-chestnut/ also suggesting exacerbation:
Though scientists desperately tried to combat the disease through a combination of monitoring, spraying, and burning, the blight continued to spread south at a rate of almost 50 miles a year, aided by lumbermen who transmitted the blight via contaminated axes and boots.
By the mid-1920s trees in North Carolina were beginning to show signs of blight and by 1935 northern Georgia's chestnuts were infected. Just five years later almost every chestnut in the Appalachian region–4 billion trees–was dead or dying, dramatically changing the landscape and make up of the Appalachian forest.
I believe this type of destruction goes on now, for example, the forest service will implement ‘controlled burns’ on high wind days, creating uncontrollable conditions that destroy hundreds of homes, such as these two New Mexico fires: Cerro Grande New Mexico fires in 2000 and the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon fire of 2022:
Two of the state’s largest wildfires in history—the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon fire of 2022 and the Cerro Grande Fire, in 2000— both started as prescribed burns that went out of control and torched miles of landscape and hundreds of buildings.
Citing worry about incidents like those recurring, community members also talked about the potential damage to old growth trees and wildlife.
We don’t need to get into even more unbelievable fires and floods recently to make my point.
And like the Chestnut Blight book showing the tannin extraction plant, Roy B. Clarkson’s book, Tumult on the Mountains: Lumbering in West Virginia 1770–1920, details the “depletion of all but a few isolated stands of virgin forest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” according to https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/print/Article/791:
This video gives some indication of the massive timber operations around the late 1800s while America was being built:
A lot of man-made destruction, as usual. We all know that there are devastating consequences to most life forms right now on this sick, toxic planet, not just the ash and chestnut trees. They say over 16,000 tree species are under threat of extinction, or over one third of all tree species. Here’s another quote from Thomas Klak:
I'm very focused on the Eastern U.S. forest with all of the trees that are in bad shape right now. Go right down the list, the Eastern Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, beech bark disease, beech leaf disease, it's a whole gamut of different hardwoods that are in trouble right now.
But we can’t just remove these bugs and fungi and the problems are magically solved, just as the Orkin man can’t spray the roaches and solve your kitchen problems.
So what is it, a fungal disease or is it all of the lumbering, burning, clearcutting, extraction sites, pollution, acidic conditions, etc.? (Btw, whatever happened to all of the acid rain fearmongering from the 80’s?) Maybe the fungal disease was the result of all of the pollution and destruction from railroads, chemicals, etc. that are involved in lumbering and mining? The articles and books I have read about the destruction of ash, elm, chestnut and other trees glaringly leave out mention of man-made pollution and other toxins, let alone the clearcutting for the timber and other industries. It is all blamed on nature, not man. And chemtrails? No need to worry about aluminum or other nanoparticulate metals in the soil (Btw, some of the tree stands on top of Shenandoah National Park’s Skyline Drive don’t look well.). And of course, these authors recommend chemical poisons to kill the pests, implying that these poisons couldn’t possibly be part of the problem.
Conclusion
These are yet more examples of how the controllers divert the focus to what they want you to believe. I’ve detailed this in other articles about macular degeneration, the cosmic microwave background, Pasteur’s role in establishing germ theory, the pesticides used for ‘myxomatosis’, DNA testing, etc. Remember, the agenda is even more sinister for us ‘useless eaters’ than all of the health-destroying situations I’ve detailed above.
So to summarize:
Good Sunshine, air, water, and nutrients are needed for a healthy, pest-resistant plant. Good microbes and paramagnetic minerals make good soil for healthy plants.
Bugs eat unhealthy plants, which correspond with the level of sugars and other dissolved solids as measured by Brix refractometers. Plants with strong health prevent bugs from eating them, just as an enemy is unwilling to attack a strong fortress or person.
The landscaping industry provides a way for the establishment to offload its waste products such as mulch, manure, industrial pesticides, etc.
Elm was used as a popular landscaping tree but was succeeded by ash trees because they say it succumbed to a fungal disease called Dutch elm disease “spread by elm bark beetles.”
There are no science papers comparing the Brix scores of healthy vs. infested ash trees.
Although they tell us the emerald ash borer is able to destroy tens of millions of ash trees so far, authorities say the predators that feed off of them have not made a dent in their population.
Authorities spray what they think are beetle-infested ash trees with pesticides, further causing damage, which could allow more beetles to feed off of the dying trees.
Authorities clearcut ash tree stands even if healthy for fear of an infestation, thus killing far more ash trees with our chainsaws than the emerald ash borer has.
Regardless of blight or not, they still established at least 21 chestnut extraction sites just in the southern Appalachians to supply half of the vegetable tannins in the U.S. used for telephone poles and railroad ties, etc. during the industrial development of the U.S.
Authorities clearcut chestnut trees even if healthy for fear of an infestation, just as is done for nearby healthy ash trees. Since all chestnut stands in the U.S. disappeared after 35 years, that’s a rate of 9000 square miles per year, or 24 square miles per day. So no, it wasn’t a fungal blight that did that.
Parasite species that wipe out their host species are ‘rare’ because they depend on them for their survival.
Authorities destroy homes and land from controlled forest fire burns.
Authorities destroy pinyon pine and its food on Native American reservations.
Authorities banned wild gooseberries and wild currants.
Free food tends to be discouraged.
Thanks for reading.
Additional Information
What happened to this forest?
15 Forgotten Fruits Medieval Farmers Grew That NEED to Come Back
Permanent damage to British Columbia’s ecosystem, affecting the salmon population and all the other species who lived there. The TED Talk within this video- he says they log 300 football fields of old growth forest a day in British Columbia. This is senseless:
Look at all the development and clearcutting in British Columbia:
So many important points! And thanks for linking my article. It breaks my heart to think about the wanton and deliberate destruction of the chestnuts, and so many other trees, which is then blamed on an insect or a fungus. The destruction of livelihood and food sources has been going on right under our noses for more than a century! This is another so-significant reason why we need to drop the belief in disease of ANY living thing being caused by an outside "invader" be it a virus, a fungus, a mold, a parasite, or an insect.
There was a beautiful bur oak tree next to my house that died suddenly one spring about 20 years ago. The arborist who took it down said it was around 150 years old, so it was there before my house and before any other settlement in the area. When this was oak savannah on the Mississippi River bluffs, traversed and probably nomadically settled by Dakota people but otherwise wild. He said it was oak wilt. I believed it then, not now.
My last comment: I think what the insects tell us about our gardens, at least most of them, including mine, is that the soil we grow food plants in is unhealthy to one degree or another. I got a refractometer, probably the same one you mention, but couldn't calibrate it properly so I didn't get actual readings on my plants. I'll try again. But the presence of insects as the plants grow is the sign that all is not well. I follow Nigel Palmer on Substack--https://www.youtube.com/@nigelpalmer3439. He posts rarely, but it's almost always about how to make various preparations from plants or eggshells and vinegar, or local indigenous materials, to build the soil and strengthen the plants. He has one video on how to use a refractometer. I suspect the soil is unhealthy due to aerial spraying, but also to our not knowing how to identify what it needs and supply it regeneratively, even those of us who are 100% committed to not using any chemical pesticides or soil builders.
Thanks for the thorough exploration! I appreciate your perspective very much.
Thank you for this well researched article. Fascinating and in line with what I know about germ vs terrain theory.
I work on a small organic vegetable farm. The couple that owns it cares very much about the soil health and producing nutrient dense veggies. They never till, use compost, reject chemicals that are allowed by USDA organic standards but they feel are harmful, they are always checking the microbial life and doing soil tests. Yet, they still deal with some aphids, other insect pests, and mold/fungal issues. I had never considered the UV light being blocked by the greenhouse and hoop houses we use during the New England winter as a possible culprit. But we still have these problems when growing outside in direct sun. I often read about how healthy plants don't have these problems, but I have not been able to find anyone that produces fruits and vegetables in any large quantity that doesn't have these problems or has natural a solution for them.
I am going to inquire about the Brix test and see if I can find any correlation to our crops that have issues. Thanks again!