Wooden planter boxes may hold emerald ash borer

Jan 24, 2008 (Duluth News-Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- LAWS | news | PowerRating | PR Charts -- Wooden planter boxes sold at Lowe's home improvement stores in Minnesota and across the U.S. may hold the larvae of an Asian insect that already has destroyed millions of ash trees in the Midwest.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture on Wednesday asked consumers to check if they had purchased wooden planter boxes labeled "Nature's Own Planters'' manufactured in Indiana by Lawson Products.

The planters come from an area under federal quarantine for emerald ash borers.

The planters are about 24 inches by 8 inches and the ash wood boards still have bark attached. They were shipped and probably sold last fall and summer.

If you have such a planter, call the state agency at (651) 201-6343 and destroy the planter as soon as possible.

"We are asking people to either burn the planters or double wrap them in 6 millimeter plastic bags and put them in the trash,'' said Geir Friisoe, plant protection division director for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, in a statement.

It's important the wood be destroyed before any ash borers might emerge from the wood in spring.

"As we understand it, these were sold nationwide, not just in Minnesota,'' said Sharon Lucik, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency learned of the problem last week. So far it's not known whether the planters were sold at any other stores.

Lowe's officials Wednesday afternoon were trying to determine how many of the planters may have been sold and how customers might get a refund or exchange, said Maureen Rich, a company spokeswoman. Lowe's has stores in Hibbing, the Twin Cities and other cities in the region.

Ash borer larvae bore into trees where they eat, eventually cutting off nutrients and killing the tree. The bugs emerge as a bright green beetle in the spring.

While emerald ash borers can advance only a few miles each year on their own, they already have been moved across the Midwest and to eastern states hitchhiking on nursery stock trees, firewood and other wood products.

The wood used to manufacture the planter boxes came from an infested area of the Midwest that is under federal quarantine and from which it is illegal to export wood products that are not certified as free of emerald ash borer. Federal and state officials continue to investigate the Lawson Products violation.

Since the discovery of emerald ash borers in 2002 near Detroit, apparently imported from China in wooden pallets, the pests have killed an estimated 20 million ash trees in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The insect already has taken hold in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan and in the Chicago area.

The insect so far has not been found in Wisconsin or Minnesota, which each have hundreds of millions of ash trees in forests and along city streets. Northern Minnesota has among the highest concentration of black ash of any forests in the United States.

Unlike some foreign pests that simply damage or defoliate trees, or kill only some of the trees they infest, emerald ash borers have proven 100 percent fatal to all varieties of ash it finds.

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