From left to right above: salt damage; rabbit damage; cedar apple rust; emerald ash borer galleries; verticillium wilt on maple
About FOL
The University of Minnesota Department of Forest Resources Outreach Line is staffed with volunteer Tree Care Advisors. This outreach has been in operation for over 50 years.
Minnesotans can contact the information help line throughout the year. Once the messages are received, Tree Care Advisor volunteers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and/or staff research the tree-related questions and provide a non-biased resultion and/or path forward.
At times, certain questions cannot be answered by the help line. In this situation, the volunteers or forestry students provide residents with direction on how to get their questions or concerns resolved. For example, a resident may have a tree exhibiting signs and symptoms of a potential disease/insect issues and they may ask the help line to identify it for them. If this potential disease/insect issue cannot be identified with the assistance of the help line, the help line may provide contact information for the Plant Disease Clinic (www.pdc.umn.edu) so the resident can submit a live (or dead) sample to the clinic to be diagnosed.