By Elizabeth Weise,
Tough new federal regulations designed to protect the nation's flora against the devastating plant disease known as sudden oak death syndrome take effect today, requiring nurseries in California, Oregon and Washington to be inspected, tested and certified before they can ship out of state. As much as 20% of the nation's plant material is estimated to come from those states, according to the American Nursery and Landscape Association.
 
All growers in those states - about 2,400 - must have their stock certified by officials of USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. And that means before spring, when millions of gardeners across the country will hit their local garden supply stores expecting shelves full of plants.

The disease affects not only oaks but also 46 species including rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas and lilacs.
Sudden oak death syndrome first emerged in California in 1995, but it has since been found in 22 states. Scientists say it may have come to North America from Asia but don't know for certain. What they do know is it must be stopped.
"The entire East Coast is potentially at risk," says Matteo Garbelotto of the University of California-Berkeley, who first isolated the disease along with David Rizzo of the University of California-Davis.
Because California and Oregon already had local testing programs in place, growers don't expect shortages in garden centers nationwide. But all three states are bracing for a tense period as they go into the crucial early spring shipping season.
"A key issue is to be able to turn around test results very quickly so you don't have an operation that is left up in the air, unable to ship," says John Aguirre of the Oregon Association of Nurseries. Nursery plants are Oregon's No. 1 agricultural crop, and 80% of them are shipped out of state.
"The first hurdle is getting the operations inspected that need to be," says Craig Regelbrugge of the American Nursery and Landscape Association.
Previously, all tests had to be done at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (news - web sites) lab in Maryland, but the agency today plans to approve four West Coast labs: one in California, two in Oregon and one in Washington. Sudden oak death syndrome is known to scientists as Phytophtora ramorum, Greek for "destroyer of plants." The diseases' characteristic bleeding bark cankers have killed tens of thousands of oaks on the West Coast. In other species, it causes leaf spots and twig cankers, weakening and sometimes killing them.
The USDA instituted the order after consultation with growers and nurseries nationwide, who feared that the disease could devastate their industry if it spread.
Though incidents of P. ramorum in nurseries have been isolated - "hundreds have been extensively surveyed," Regelbrugge says - the few cases in which it has been found "have not been explainable," and that's why the USDA acted.