In Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, more than 90 percent of the dogwoods have died in heavily shaded cove and alluvial forests since dogwood anthracnose was first noticed there in the late 1980's. While the mortality rate has been as low as 57 percent in drier and more open forest types like oak-hickory stands, a report issued last month by Dr. Michael Jenkins, the park's ecologist, predicts that flowering dogwood will largely disappear from the Smokies as larger trees die and are not replaced by new cohorts or regeneration. The loss of dogwoods is more than an aesthetic blow. The dogwoods' decline has wide-reaching implications for forest dynamics, Pierce says. Losing these trees could seriously impact songbird populations.
Dogwoods produce nutritious fruits in the fall, which serve as a food source for forest songbirds.
Birds need high-energy resources they can easily find, especially when they are migrating. This is the final insult. Dogwood leaves also have a high calcium content and decompose rapidly, enriching the forest soil. The loss of dogwoods from lower elevation forests could have a damaging effect on soil acidification, nutrient availability and numerous ecological relationships, Jenkins wrote. Dogwood anthracnose was first noticed in 1978 in southern New York and western Connecticut.