(Radio Iowa) – The only oak species that are native in all of Iowa’s 99 counties is facing some disease issues. The D-N-R’s Tivon Feeley, says they are seeing a lot of Bur Oak Blight. “And that is a fungus that is on the leaf. And it tends to overwinter on the bud scales where the leaf will come out the nest year and infects the tree next spring,” according to Feeley. “The numbers of Bur Oak Blight have been kind of fluctuating. We’ve seen it high, the last couple of years it has been low. But once you have it — if you don’t treat the treat it — the tree will eventually decline. And those numbers are now showing up in our forest inventory data.” He says it’s a concern from two aspects.

“You’ve got the landscaper, you know the person who owns the property that wants the beauty of these big bur oak trees out there. And then you’ve got it from the forestry perspective/. If you are out in western Iowa in the Loess Hills, it’s one of the drought-tolerant oaks that you can grow — and if you want you can harvest,” he says. While there is a treatment — he says it is not the best for a large scale.

He says it is an injectible fungicide that you inject in the spring. “The problem with bur oak blight is it is so common that the treatments are only affordable and can work in small capacities like one or two yard trees. It’s not something you can use to treat a forest worth of bur oaks,” Feeley says. He says if you suspect you have a tree is suffering from Bur Oak Blight, get the problem correctly diagnosed before any management decisions are made. You can send samples to the Iowa State University Plant Diagnostic Clinic for testing.