For more than fifty years, woods walkers in the Adirondacks and elsewhere have learned not to take the beautifully smooth, “thin-skinned” bark of the American beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) for granted. Our grandparents grew up suddenly missing the American chestnut as the blight of 1900 quickly decimated that species as a dominant tree in our eastern woodlands, along with its innumerable cottage and industrial uses, and its sustenance for so much of our native wildlife. Those born in the 1950s as I was have been missing the great American beech trees whose dominant individuals graced forests from the Canadian Maritimes and New England through the south and … Continue reading Forests: The Blight of Beech Bark Disease