Talk:Hymenoscyphus fraxineus

Importance

I rated this article as "High Importance" due to the devastating effects the fungus is curently having on ash trees throughout Europe. It is currently big news in the UK. 86.23.116.200 (talk) 19:02, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fully agree. JRPG (talk) 21:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are right that this disease has hit the headlines in the United Kingdom, and for this reason, I was very surprised that the article did not report about the disease in Britain. I have now added to the article that this has affected ash trees in the United Kingdom. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Did you overlook the lengthy section Ash dieback in the United Kingdom later in the article? I don't think your addition does any harm, but if anything this article has too much detail about the disease in the United Kingdom and not enough about its history and effects elsewhere. Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks - I have just had another look at this article now, and I have now found the section on "Ash dieback in the United Kingdom" - many apologies about missing this section when I looked at this article earlier today (Tuesday 20 November!) ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chalara fraxinea or Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus?

I was wondering if this page should be moved to Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus - the name is a horrible mouthful, but it does seem to be the formal name for the fungus. As this paper [1] says:

Since the early 1990s, European ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) has been affected by a lethal disease caused by the ascomycete fungus, Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus, originally known under the name of its anamorph, Chalara fraxinea...

Pasicles (talk) 18:18, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tricky question! User:Sasata and User:Stemonitis would be good people to ask. I started a related thread here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fungi#Thielaviopsis_fraxinea_.2F_Chalara_fraxinea last week as I wasn't sure anyone would notice a thread here. I'm inclined to stick with Chalara fraxinea for the moment, even if it's technically incorrect, as this is what most reliable sources are still using and it might confuse readers if we use Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus. SmartSE (talk) 23:27, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now that this page has unilaterally been moved to Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus by User:The_Anome, I see that the first line has been changed to "Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus is an Ascomycete fungus whose asexual (anamorphic) form causes ash dieback". This sounds a rather strange statement to me, as if H. pseudoalbidus is benign except in its anamorphic form - is there any reason to suppose this statement is correct? Pasicles (talk) 22:21, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll make no pretence at understanding the finer details -though my other 0.5 probably does, I'm just a woodland walker. 99% of users will be looking for ash dieback and will be redirected accordingly. However all google references except wikipedia -are to Chalara fraxinea -please check -and on that basis I suggest you tactfully move it back referencing WP:BRD and this discussion. Regards JRPG (talk) 22:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure there was consensus for the move - it might be technically more correct, but WP:COMMONNAME suggests we should use more well known names whenever possible. As I noted at WT:FUNGI, even most scientists are still using Chalara fraxinea in their papers, so we should probably continue to use it as well, until this changes. SmartSE (talk) 22:59, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. JRPG (talk) 23:19, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I marginally prefer favour Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus over Chalara fraxinea as the page title. Although scientific papers from 2006 to 2011 (obviously) used C. fraxinea, a look at the papers on the FRAXBACK website [2] seems to suggest that in the past year they have mostly switched to H. pseudoalbidus. It's certainly true that the popular media much prefers Chalara fraxinea - I suspect because it's a much easier name to remember than the devilish Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus. :) But all fungi on Wikipedia, as far as I know, are called by their official scientific name - not by what happens to be popular. As far as I can tell (One fungus, one name) H. pseudoalbidus is (or will be) the one true official name. There should have been an attempt to ask for consensus prior to the page move though. Pasicles (talk) 00:04, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another picture?

Is there any chance of a picture showing more close up details? JRPG (talk) 21:17, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to say "not likely", but I notice FERA has some close-up pictures on its website [3], and according to their website [4] any material (other than logos) can be reused under the terms of the Open Government Licence. This is apparently a compatible licence over at commons [5]. So unless anyone can see a flaw in this logic, we can, I guess, upload those pictures to commons. Pasicles (talk) 23:16, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That looks fine to me. I had thought before that the current photo is a bit crap and we have no way of verifying that it really is this disease. It would be great if we could find a free version that is something like the one at the top of this article as it shows the whole-tree symptoms. It's unlikely to exist at the moment, but someone might be able to get one by emailing a researcher studying the disease and asking nicely if they can release a photo under a CC licence. SmartSE (talk) 23:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry by implication to criticise the current photo, the FERA leaf and branch lesion photos look excellent and will help the public. JRPG (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay then, I've uploaded 6 of the 8 FERA pictures [6] - hopefully they should demonstrate a reasonable range of the symptoms. In fact the "symptoms" section of the page is the one bit which probably still needs expansion - it's a bit brief at the moment. Pasicles (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. As a non expert, could I request photos that allow me -a woodland walker- to suspect the disease in any season. The FERA leaf photos could be marked as summer etc. The trunk cross section is perhaps most suitable in a section describing the pathology. The problem with the existing photo is that although it was taken in July, at first I thought it was winter. FIO I've added a link from Fraxinus JRPG (talk) 11:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've put three of the pictures on the page for now. I've also added a link to the Forestry Commission symptoms guide at the bottom of the page. I notice also that Forestry Commission photos [7] are also available to use under the Open Government Licence. But at the moment both FERA and the FC seem mainly interested in showing early symptom photos. No doubt that will change with time. Pasicles (talk) 17:26, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Resistent strains??

Could someone with a much better knowledge than I have look at this to see if its worth including. Regards JRPG (talk) 21:46, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Name change

I moved the page from Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus to Hymenoscyphus fraxineus since in the words of the Forestry Commission "Hymenoscyphus fraxineus is now widely accepted as the name to use". The new name comes from this 2014 paper which claims that "under the rules for the naming of fungi with pleomorphic life-cycles adopted in July 2011, the nomenclaturally correct name for the fungus causing the current ash dieback in Europe is determined to be Hymenoscyphus fraxineus". And sure enough, many organisations are migrating to this new name now: (NCBI, www.cabi.org, forestpathology.ethz.ch etc.) Pasicles (talk) 19:17, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unjustified hysteria

The sentence at the end of the second paragraph reads "A 2016 report published in the Journal of Ecology posited that a combination of H. fraxineus and emerald ash borer attacks could result in the extinction of European ash trees." Regrettably the link is to a BBC article instead of the original scientific article in the Journal of Ecology, and apparently there is some discrepancy between the two articles. Thus, Dr Thomas, the lead author of the scientific review, is quoted as writing "it is likely that almost all ash trees in Europe will be wiped out - just as the elm was largely eliminated by Dutch elm disease."

The terms "wiped out" and "eliminated" are imprecise and unhelpful, as I will now explain. In the case of elms we lost virtually the entire populations of old and mature trees, but most if not all the species are well represented by young trees over large areas and it is absurd to suggest that the genus is extinct or could possibly face extinction as a result of this epidemic. Dr Oliver Rackham reasoned that Dutch Elm Disease had been present and responsible for periodic, and often catastrophic epidemics amongst elms since at least as far back as the Neolithic period (The History of the Countryside (1987) pp. 243-7.). Nevertheless elms are still very much with us, hence on this evidence, if ash trees will be "wiped out - just as the elm was largely eliminated" we can rest assured that ash trees in some form will be around for a long time to come. Talk here of extinction is nonsense arising from a journalist out her depth on the subject, and a piece of shoddy writing from a scientist who should know better.

A more reasoned and professional assessment is given by the John Innes Centre in an online article published in Winter 2019/2020 (<https://www.jic.ac.uk/advances/rising-from-the-ashes/>). The leader of that study, Professor James Brown, is quoted as saying "In the long term we predict that ash in the UK will gradually evolve greater resistance to ash dieback because of natural selection. We expect that healthy trees may suffer some harm from emerald ash borer if it gets in to the country but not be severely damaged.”

I suggest that the hysteria reported by the BBC in 2016 was unjustified both then and now, and I suggest that this sentence is removed and a more accurate and appropriate prognosis is substitution for the hysterical nonsense.

I also wish to record my disapproval of Wikipedia's penchant for secondary sources, particularly out-of-date ones. Kombo the mzungu (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]