Tree-killer virus back in forest

Parts of the forest were cordoned off and burned last year

A disease threatening Britain's trees continues to spread in Hampshire's New Forest despite efforts to contain it.

Phytophthora ramorum is a fungal-like cause of a condition known in the United States as sudden oak death.

It spread to the UK in 2002 and has since been found mainly on viburnums and rhododendron bushes.

Last year, dozens of rhododendron plants were burned along the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive in the forest, but the spores have since returned.

The Forestry Commission says the disease has not yet spread to surrounding trees but the ones most at risk are Douglas Firs and beech trees.

'Splashing' spores

Six months ago parts of the forest were cordoned off to prevent the spread of the fungal spores by dogs and wild animals.

Richard Burke, of the Forestry Commission, shows what the symptoms look like

But the new outbreak has been detected just a few hundred yards beyond the cordon.

Tourists make 13 million visits to the New Forest every year and the aim is to prevent further parts of the forest being closed.

Richard Burke, from the Forestry Commission, said: "The classic symptoms you see are always low to the ground.

"Rain might have been washing off a plant and disturbing the spores in the soil, and splashing them up on to the leaves of the rhododendron plant."

The fungus was first found in the UK in a garden centre in April 2002.