Beech Leaf Disease Threatens NYC Trees: Here’s the Good News

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There is a worm growing in Brooklyn, millions of them, actually, and, for a microscopically thin nematode not quite as tall as this letter I, it moves surprisingly fast. The nematode, known to ecologists as Litylenchus crenatae mccannii and first discovered in 2012, causes beech leaf disease. It nests in the beech’s buds, replicates wildly, and causes havoc for its leaves, eventually killing the tree. If you’ve hiked in northern New Jersey forests recently,…