The pathogenic fungus Cryphonectria parasitica (formerly Endothia parasitica) is a member of the Ascomycota (sac fungi) taxon, and is the main cause of chestnut blight, a devastating disease of the American chestnut tree that caused a mass extinction in the early 1900s of this once plentiful tree from its historic range in the eastern United States.
Read more about Chestnut Blight: Overview, Symptoms, Conservation Efforts, Hybrid Chestnut Trees
Famous quotes containing the word blight:
“There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)