Can we get rid
of the disease?

"Think of human disease. Look at all of the money spent on medical research in the whole world since humans started doing medical research, it's an incredible amount of money and time and researchers have eliminated maybe one disease, smallpox. That's the only one.

When you think about it, you can't eliminate diseases. What we'd like to do one day is to be able to say dogwood anthracnose is manageable. There's always going to be some disease, but if there's a few spots on a few leaves, so what? As long as it's not interferring with the dogwood tree's normal reproductive capabilities, so the birds have the berries to feed on, people are happy having dogwoods in their yards, and the dogwood disease is not causing any economic losses, that would be satisfactory."

What can we do to make the
disease more manageable?

Breed disease resistant dogwood trees
Chemical control of dogwood anthracnose
Plant dogwoods in areas where they are least likely to contract anthracnose
Maintain healthy dogwood trees