Ash

For centuries, ash was the most resilient tree in European woodlands. Cut it down, and it sprouts back from the stump within months. This regenerative capacity made ash the foundation of coppicing—the sustainable harvesting system that provided firewood, tool handles, and building poles on 10-year cycles for generations. Ash was probably the most versatile wood in the European countryside: strong, straight-grained, and endlessly renewable. The tree had evolved to survive damage by regenerating faster than herbivores could consume it.

Then the emerald ash borer arrived. First detected in Michigan in 2002, this metallic-green beetle from Asia has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees across North America. Mortality in affected stands exceeds 99%. North American ash species never evolved defenses against this beetle—they lack the chemical deterrents and bark characteristics that Asian ash trees developed over millennia of coevolution. Billions of dollars have been spent on research and control with limited success. The beetle continues spreading, threatening functional extinction of ash across the continent.

Europe faces a compounding nightmare. The emerald ash borer is now spreading westward from Russia—first Moscow in 2003, then Ukraine, now approaching European borders. But European ash is simultaneously under attack from ash dieback, a fungal disease caused by Hymenoscyphus fraxineus that has swept from Poland across Europe since the 1990s. Mortality rates reach 85% in plantations and 70% in natural woodlands, with less than 5% of trees showing natural resistance. The disease is particularly devastating to coppiced ash, where regenerative shoots provide fresh tissue for the pathogen. The regeneration strategy that made ash invaluable now accelerates its death.

The double threat transforms the strategic landscape. Ash timber prices have reached historic highs precisely because the supply is collapsing—the tree's days are numbered due to emerald ash borer. Managers must now choose between retaining potentially tolerant trees (breeding for resistance) or harvesting before total loss. Traditional coppice management, which sustained ash populations for centuries, is now contraindicated for most stands.

The business parallel is dual disruption—when two simultaneous threats overwhelm defenses designed for single challenges. Traditional retail evolved to compete against other physical stores; it had no defense against e-commerce disruption AND mobile shopping AND same-day delivery simultaneously. Newspapers survived radio; they survived television; they couldn't survive the internet eroding advertising AND classified revenue AND reader attention simultaneously. Ash survived centuries of harvesting, herbivory, and competition. It cannot survive a novel beetle AND a novel fungus arriving together.

What ash teaches is that resilience is context-dependent. The coppicing capacity that made ash sustainable for centuries now spreads disease through vulnerable new growth. The regeneration strategy that evolved to overcome herbivory provides no defense against a pathogen that attacks regrowth specifically. Strategies that work in one threat environment can become liabilities when the threat landscape shifts.