That's painful Big Bend. Whatever the cause, losing a tree / trees after time, money and effort has been spent, is a real drag. It sure deflates you.
Lose a few trees each year for various causes (occasional drought with extreme Florida heat, etc) but something about having to cut it down while it still appears to be a healthy tree makes it especially hard.
On that note, gave a bit of a primer on the ambrosia beetle last year and will do so again this year in the event anyone runs across the tell-tale toothpicks... REALLY scary how many trees they've been found to target.
Pulled from a North Carolina State University report, "species most commonly reported to be damaged in North Carolina nurseries are styrax, dogwood, redbud, maple, ornamental cherry, Japanese maple, and crepe myrtle. Other reported hosts include pecan, peach, plum, persimmon, golden rain tree, sweet gum, Shumard oak, Chinese elm, magnolia, fig, and azalea."
From an invastve species compendium website, "No known stress factors could be associated with primary attacks on peach orchards in South Carolina, USA (
Kovach and Gorsuch, 1985).
Atkinson et al. (2000) note large numbers of attacks in Florida, USA on Shumard oak saplings which showed no other symptoms of stress, disease or attack by other insects, and consider that the beetles caused the death of the trees.
Atkinson et al. (2000) also noted isolated attacks on large Drake elm saplings.
Most worrisome of all is a report by the state of Indiana that speaks to the common spread now being between Texas to Virginia, but with additional attacks noted as far north as zone 5 in Indiana. I've regularly seen it quoted that they can target "100" different tree species and the Indiana list is quite longer than the others (though none I found spoke to Mulberry so add it to the list...). The Indiana page lists trees that are susceptible as Aspen, Azalea, White Ash, Beech, River Birch, Black Walnut, Bradford Pears, Chinese Elm, Crabapple, Crape Myrtle, Dogwood, Golden Rain Tree, Grape, Hickory (Pecans included), Honey Locust, Japanese Maple, Japanese Snowbell, Magnolia, Mimosa, Persimmon, Redbud, Red Oak, Red Maple, Sweet Gum, Tulip Poplar, and Willow Oak.
Few educational links for anyone who might want to read up on them...
http://www.in.gov/dnr/entomolo/files/ep-GranulateAmbrosiaBeetleFactsheet.pdf
http://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/W289-P.pdf
