Scottish Plant Health Centre add online plant directory

The Scottish Plant Health Centre (PHC) has included a new plant directory feature to its website 'Plant Diseases in the Natural Environment'.

The aim of this resource is to identify and collate suitable plant health information and advice for the natural environment in Scotland. The information provided is mainly relevant to native (and long-term naturalised) trees and shrubs in Scotland and users are guided on the first steps in identification and are signposted to relevant resources for disease diagnosis, with the aim of evaluating if the disease is common and subject to prevention and control measures, or is notifiable. Clear advice is given on which diseases are notifiable and what to do when these threat organisms are encountered.

The Plant Health Centre is a virtual centre of expertise funded by the Scottish Government through RESAS (Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division) to help tackle plant health challenges for Scotland.

Plant diseases are a natural feature of ecosystems where their effects help structure communities and can actually help support biodiversity.  However, sometimes diseases can be overwhelming and fatally damaging, causing real declines of a species. Two good examples of this in trees and forests are Dutch Elm Disease, which caused the loss of millions of elm trees in the UK, and Chestnut Blight, which virtually wiped out American chestnuts in the USA.

Plants within natural habitats in Scotland have mostly evolved alongside their native diseases and so the degree of damage caused is limited. However, due to the shipping of plant material around the world, foreign and invasive disease-causing organisms are increasingly coming into contact with naïve hosts with resulting outbreaks of damaging disease epidemics. This is made worse by global warming and the resulting climate change, causing stress to plants and weakening their natural defenses.

Scottish Plant Health Centre aims to assist those who work in the natural environment to identify diseases and to decide if they are part of Scotland's natural habitat or alternatively, are caused by invasive and possibly notifiable threat organisms. A notifiable organism or disease is any organism (or the suite of problems it causes) that is required by law to be reported to government authorities and you are legally obliged to report it.

Access the Scottish Plant Health Centre portal here: Plant Health Centre.