Progress killed most of the black walnut trees in The Dalles, and now disease appears to be wiping out what's left.
Bob Schecter of Pine Creek Wood Company in Dufur said only 20 to 30 black walnuts remain in The Dalles, and most are dead or dying.
"My son and I were trying to come up with walnuts in The Dalles (that are living), we couldn't come up with very many," he said. "It's pretty much over."
Schecter said the popular opinion among those in The Dalles is that a disease called walnut bunch is to blame.
Gary Goby of Albany, the Oregon chair of the National Walnut Association, compared walnut bunch to diabetes in people. Both, he said, block the vascular system causing the ends to die. In the case of diabetics, they often lose circulation to their toes; in trees, the death starts at the top.
"Walnut bunch disease is in Oregon; it's in Oregon big time," he said.
Goby hasn't visited The Dalles recently, but said "we know some trees have died from walnut bunch disease in that area."
But Melody Putnam, director of the diagnostics laboratory at Oregon State University, said the Willamette Valley has seen a high mortality rate of black walnuts in recent years, and those trees have been tested for bunch with results returning negative.
"I've never seen it," Putnam said, "and it was never confirmed by the people who were working on it."
Putnam described the symptoms of walnut bunch as "witch's brooming," where dense clusters of short branches appear within a small area, in the shape of mistletoe.
Whatever is killing the trees, people who have them in their yards are sad to see them go.
Mike Wacker has a roughly 90-year-old black walnut next to his house that is dying. Schecter has told him it will need to be removed within the next year because the tree could start shedding its mammoth branches.
"We feel terrible," Wacker said. "It's very sad. You drive around town and you see these beautiful trees that have been there for decades."
Wacker's tree is one of the largest remaining in the area, especially now that another old tree has been cut down.
Located on Skip Tschanz's property, the tree required two cranes to remove it. His wife, Jan, said it was planted in either 1903 or 1908.
"Black walnut was not a good urban tree. They're messy. They drop a ton of walnuts, they drop a ton of leaves," Skip Tschanz said. "That said, we loved our black walnut. It was the dominant tree in our yard. It shaded our whole yard. We miss it."Associated Press via the Statesman Journal
