If you drink tea or coffee with sugar or you have flavoured syrups in your coffee shop drinks, you could be unwittingly damaging your teeth and adding unhelpful calories to your diet. A wide variety of tablet or granular artificial sweeteners are available and are safe to consume in your hot drinks.
Beech bark disease is the result of a complex interaction between three non-native pests (a tiny scale insect and two species of Nectria fungus) and a native Nectria fungus. The beech scale insect wounds the tree by piercing the bark with sharp mouth parts and sucking out the sap.
They are recognized by their smooth, light gray bark. American beech trees retain this smooth texture their entire lives. In shady forests, beeches grow up long and straight with small, dense crowns of foliage. In open, sunny areas beech trees develop shorter trunks with horizontal branches and wide foliage crowns.