Discovery and History

The pathogen was firstly found by de Thümen (1878) on long leave pine (P. palustris) in the south-eastern USA. Later it has spread and developed into three lineages. The northern lineage occurs in northern USA, Canada and Europe, the southern lineage is dominant in southern USA and Europe as well, and a third lineage occurs only in Mexico, which is probably the centre of origin of the pathogen (Huang et al., 1995, Janoušek et al., 2016). In the southern USA the pathogen was a cause of timber damages in 1980’s exceeding million cubic metres per hectar (Cordell et al., 1990). Also in other parts of the USA the value of Christmas and amenity trees were significantly affected (Tubby et al. 2023).

To Europe the pathogen was probably introduced before 1980s and observed in Spain and Croatia (Tubby et al. 2023). Historic data about the spread of L. acicola, however, remain doubtful because of very common misidentification due to its similarity to Dothistroma septosporum. More recent reports of the disease increased significantly after 2008 (van der Nest et al. 2019).