Blight
Emily Monosson
W.W. Norton & Co., $28.95
That fungus had been imported on Japanese chestnut trees. Once it arrived on U.S. soil, it spread like wildfire, driving the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) to functional extinction.
Today, some still grow, though only as immature trees popping up from the still-living roots of long-gone trees. But these shoots have no hope of towering over the forest as chestnut trees once did, standing as tall as a nine-story building. Because C. parasitica persists in the environment, the saplings are doomed to die from the moment they sprout.
The fate of the American chestnut is only one example of the devastation fungi can spawn. In her new book, Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, author Emily Monosson presents an eye-opening, and at times grisly, account of fungal diseases that threaten pine trees, bananas, frogs, bats and, increasingly, people.
2023-07-30 06:00:00
Source from www.sciencenews.org