Word: fungus
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ASMALLER number of biologists have also taken exception to the University's spraying program for the Dutch elm disease-a fungus infection imported from Europe. Two species of bark beetle known as Scolytus multistriatus and Hylurgopinus rufipes, inadvertently carry the fungal spores that cause the disease. B and G tries to control the beetles by spraying Harvard's clms in early April before the insects emerge from hibernation...
Later in the summer, a contractor also sprays for the clm leaf beetle, Galerucella xanthomelaena. This beetle does not spread the elm disease itself, but large infestations of these insects may weaken the elms and reduce their resistance to the fungus...
Hansel was not the first to mount a scientific assault on elm disease. Experts have long known that it is caused by a fungus, carried by the elm-bark beetle, that clogs the tree's circulatory system. But ever since the disease hit the U.S. in the early 1930s, every cure has failed. DDT may kill birds as well as the beetles; another pesticide named Bidrin sometimes destroys the trees. Frantic elm owners have resorted to such quack remedies as turpentine injections or driving galvanized nails into the trunks (in hopes that the zinc oxide will deter the fungus...
...elms. It is the quinol compounds in elm bark, he found, that make the tree delectable to beetles. Paradoxically, when the insects begin to munch, oxidation changes the tasty quinols into quinones that repel the beetles. By this time, unfortunately, the beetles have already infected the tree with deadly fungus. To ward off the beetles, Norris is now working to synthesize a quinone-like, nontoxic repellent that can be injected into the tree or sprayed on the bark...
...himself, has the gift of using sometimes lyrical, sometimes colloquial, language to describe the woods, the men, and the fire that consumes both: "Each time the cull deck shifted, tons of fuel would resettle and a hundred dozen sparks would be sucked upwards like the spores of some livid fungus." As his dispirited warriors of the soul wander the fire-blasted countryside, a suspenseful psychological drama is created that subtly expresses the themes of innocence, guilt and the corruption of the individual by society...