01-11-2017, 05:50 PM
Thanks Obie Wan, that's way more than I got out of him a year ago, so I guess it's progress. Interesting point he had about the soils responding differently to soil amendments. It would make sense that "deep ash soils" would not need as much alkalizing as thin veils of "muck soil" on pahoehoe. However, I never wrote anything about doing any pruning and actually don't do that as a rule, as I don't want to add any extra vulnerabilities to the equation.
I feel sure Dr Friday is a very busy man and am grateful he took some time to respond, however, I can't help but be reminded of a boyfriend I had a few years back who was a mathematician. The only thing he liked better than proving his own theories was disproving someone else's. "Kick to the balls!" he would yell gleefully after finishing a paper. Status quo.
Now that I have your attention, in case it was my writing that was confusing, let me try to reiterate. An estimated 300 year old tree (Let's call it Tree X) at the top of our property had half perished in a span of two weeks. I decided to burn dead wood from Tree Y, a tree that had just been taken down at the bottom of our property after being consumed by CF. (Felling Tree Y possibly hastened the spread of the infection to Tree X.) We had a mountain of branches. After the burn, I then scattered the hard wood ashes from Tree Y around the base of Tree X. The result was that the remaining working roots of Tree X drew the nutrients up to the remaining living branches. This seems to suggest that there may be several "stems" within one Ohia trunk that provide nutrients to dedicated branches. The half of Tree X that died never rebounded, but the living half is still limping along a year later. None of it's major branches have fallen or been pruned. I did also scatter a few handfuls of lime around this particular tree after carefully eliminating root competition.
I informed various members of Dr Friday's department at the beginning of this experiment last year and requested a test through one of his associates that I managed to reach phone. I naively thought that someone in the Tropical Sciences Department would be as excited as I was, but was met with a similar lack of curiosity as the above response from DR Friday who is poo pooing based solely on theory. Respectfully, while theoretical sciences have unlimited value, in my opinion, that value is measured by actual investigation. I spend a great deal of my time in the forest in a slow conversation with these trees. Action and response, this is the cross-species language that is spoken. Healthy and unhealthy trees, here in the "muck soils of Puna", have both shown profoundly positive responses to ash soil amendments. (Pesky historical data.) While the "deep ash soils" up north may be our bread basket, the "mucky" forests of Puna and Ka'u are our lungs. Residential forests in Puna makes up about 1/6 of the landmass of Hawai'i Island and it's concerns shouldn't be minimized.
Considering no one is really sure exactly how the fungus is spread, I concede that maybe it is premature to decide that the nutrition factor is the leading edge of these good results, because the alkalization, and saponification, or a trifecta of all these qualities may be what makes this treatment an effective balm; saponification, in that when potassium hydroxide (KOH) meets any fat, it literally becomes soap. Select fungal pathogens, parasites and bacteria wrap themselves in biofilms (fats) as a protective barrier against immune response from host. So regarding ash, as well as providing substantial nutrients, theoretically, if caught in time the KOH could act as an internal power wash to the vascular systems of these trees. Allowing a living tree participate in it's own treatment through uptake is just practical. Any microscope jockey's out there wanna join in this game? If my Tree X is an anomaly, the only way we shall find out, is if others residents who have time and care, also give it a try. The academics don't seem to want this experiment. Puzzling. I tried to be polite and leave out the general lack of interest from Camp-Friday from this thread but you guys pushed for it. I am certainly not trying to discredit anyone. All solid Brain Power welcome. I posted this experiment with the expectation that others would investigate on their own terms. Treasure Hunt! I hope some light bulbs switched on with today's posting.
Again, I only used a small barrel to burn small amounts of wood at a time. Nothing overly ambitious and while fire always presents an element of risk, a small, well tended burn pit in an open clearing is pretty manageable, (this is Ag land for Pete's sake!) I keep copious amounts of water nearby. I use the heat from the fire to process personal stores of foods. Economy of motion. This is legal in Hawaii County and not needing a permit. Due to my physical limitations, I only create a couple of pounds of ash at a time but this packs a whallop for trees in an area with constant soil erosion from copious amounts of acid rain. These small measures should be reassuring to folks who are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this problem. If one lil' ol' gardner can reverse a trend on one acre of property then the goal of blight abatement is not outside our collective reach.
Anyone afraid of fire in Puna should be truly concerned about the entire forest dying because the more trees that die, the greater the potential risk of substantial property losses. Anyone giving grief about small burn pits, didn't notice the $100k worth of arial displays going off on New Years above our largely dead forests. That was awesome, but good thing there was weather! It was the fear of our forest burning that led me to check out the ecological function of fire without actually burning anything down. Do we not possess opposable thumbs and fire extinguishers?
Re: protocol, Some of you are in favor of fire regulations, some are not. If County intends to regulate the disposal of significant amounts of diseased Ohia/ copious bio waste/ tinder via permit enforcement and fines, they should maybe consider providing us with a solution, such as a dedicated burn station/ash repository, somewhere way out there in the lava desert.
Ash experiments are not here to jeopardize anyone else's research grants, property or dogma and should be seen as supportive to any other protocols (of which there are currently none/few? available to residents.) This is the eleventh hour. Again there is much plasticity in the spread of ROD so the fight against it should be multi-tiered. Test Kits for ROD should be made available to concerned residents.
To readers and participants, I can't claim this is a cure yet but in the mean time it may show a pathway or buy some time until a cure is found. Many unknowns. Sorry for any previous misunderstandings. Please keep debating. Thanks again for having a heart for Ohia!
Ohia and Lehua, the exiled lover's in a desperate bid for their lives. How will the story end?
ohiasolutions@gmail.com
I feel sure Dr Friday is a very busy man and am grateful he took some time to respond, however, I can't help but be reminded of a boyfriend I had a few years back who was a mathematician. The only thing he liked better than proving his own theories was disproving someone else's. "Kick to the balls!" he would yell gleefully after finishing a paper. Status quo.
Now that I have your attention, in case it was my writing that was confusing, let me try to reiterate. An estimated 300 year old tree (Let's call it Tree X) at the top of our property had half perished in a span of two weeks. I decided to burn dead wood from Tree Y, a tree that had just been taken down at the bottom of our property after being consumed by CF. (Felling Tree Y possibly hastened the spread of the infection to Tree X.) We had a mountain of branches. After the burn, I then scattered the hard wood ashes from Tree Y around the base of Tree X. The result was that the remaining working roots of Tree X drew the nutrients up to the remaining living branches. This seems to suggest that there may be several "stems" within one Ohia trunk that provide nutrients to dedicated branches. The half of Tree X that died never rebounded, but the living half is still limping along a year later. None of it's major branches have fallen or been pruned. I did also scatter a few handfuls of lime around this particular tree after carefully eliminating root competition.
I informed various members of Dr Friday's department at the beginning of this experiment last year and requested a test through one of his associates that I managed to reach phone. I naively thought that someone in the Tropical Sciences Department would be as excited as I was, but was met with a similar lack of curiosity as the above response from DR Friday who is poo pooing based solely on theory. Respectfully, while theoretical sciences have unlimited value, in my opinion, that value is measured by actual investigation. I spend a great deal of my time in the forest in a slow conversation with these trees. Action and response, this is the cross-species language that is spoken. Healthy and unhealthy trees, here in the "muck soils of Puna", have both shown profoundly positive responses to ash soil amendments. (Pesky historical data.) While the "deep ash soils" up north may be our bread basket, the "mucky" forests of Puna and Ka'u are our lungs. Residential forests in Puna makes up about 1/6 of the landmass of Hawai'i Island and it's concerns shouldn't be minimized.
Considering no one is really sure exactly how the fungus is spread, I concede that maybe it is premature to decide that the nutrition factor is the leading edge of these good results, because the alkalization, and saponification, or a trifecta of all these qualities may be what makes this treatment an effective balm; saponification, in that when potassium hydroxide (KOH) meets any fat, it literally becomes soap. Select fungal pathogens, parasites and bacteria wrap themselves in biofilms (fats) as a protective barrier against immune response from host. So regarding ash, as well as providing substantial nutrients, theoretically, if caught in time the KOH could act as an internal power wash to the vascular systems of these trees. Allowing a living tree participate in it's own treatment through uptake is just practical. Any microscope jockey's out there wanna join in this game? If my Tree X is an anomaly, the only way we shall find out, is if others residents who have time and care, also give it a try. The academics don't seem to want this experiment. Puzzling. I tried to be polite and leave out the general lack of interest from Camp-Friday from this thread but you guys pushed for it. I am certainly not trying to discredit anyone. All solid Brain Power welcome. I posted this experiment with the expectation that others would investigate on their own terms. Treasure Hunt! I hope some light bulbs switched on with today's posting.
Again, I only used a small barrel to burn small amounts of wood at a time. Nothing overly ambitious and while fire always presents an element of risk, a small, well tended burn pit in an open clearing is pretty manageable, (this is Ag land for Pete's sake!) I keep copious amounts of water nearby. I use the heat from the fire to process personal stores of foods. Economy of motion. This is legal in Hawaii County and not needing a permit. Due to my physical limitations, I only create a couple of pounds of ash at a time but this packs a whallop for trees in an area with constant soil erosion from copious amounts of acid rain. These small measures should be reassuring to folks who are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this problem. If one lil' ol' gardner can reverse a trend on one acre of property then the goal of blight abatement is not outside our collective reach.
Anyone afraid of fire in Puna should be truly concerned about the entire forest dying because the more trees that die, the greater the potential risk of substantial property losses. Anyone giving grief about small burn pits, didn't notice the $100k worth of arial displays going off on New Years above our largely dead forests. That was awesome, but good thing there was weather! It was the fear of our forest burning that led me to check out the ecological function of fire without actually burning anything down. Do we not possess opposable thumbs and fire extinguishers?
Re: protocol, Some of you are in favor of fire regulations, some are not. If County intends to regulate the disposal of significant amounts of diseased Ohia/ copious bio waste/ tinder via permit enforcement and fines, they should maybe consider providing us with a solution, such as a dedicated burn station/ash repository, somewhere way out there in the lava desert.
Ash experiments are not here to jeopardize anyone else's research grants, property or dogma and should be seen as supportive to any other protocols (of which there are currently none/few? available to residents.) This is the eleventh hour. Again there is much plasticity in the spread of ROD so the fight against it should be multi-tiered. Test Kits for ROD should be made available to concerned residents.
To readers and participants, I can't claim this is a cure yet but in the mean time it may show a pathway or buy some time until a cure is found. Many unknowns. Sorry for any previous misunderstandings. Please keep debating. Thanks again for having a heart for Ohia!
Ohia and Lehua, the exiled lover's in a desperate bid for their lives. How will the story end?
ohiasolutions@gmail.com