Sudden oak death, a fungus that has devastated hundreds of thousands of northern California's prized, majestic coastal oak trees, has been found on a nursery-bred bonsai camellia tree in southeastern Pennsylvania.

	Consumer alert The state Department of Agriculture is asking anyone who has ordered a bonsai camellia or other host plant from a California nursery or who has received a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about such a purchase to call the regional office in Creamery at 610-489-1003. On the Internet Read more information about Sudden Oak Death.

The state Department of Agriculture found the fungus on the camellia tree shipped in January from Specialty Plants Inc., a large mail-order nursery in California. The purchaser, responding to a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, turned in the plant April 30.

It is the first time that the sudden oak death fungus has been confirmed in Pennsylvania.

"The plant had been kept indoors since arriving in Pennsylvania ... and we are confident that, given the circumstances, there was virtually no opportunity for the disease to escape to the outdoors," Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said. "However, our staff are taking samples from the surrounding area to verify it is contained."

Bonsai camellias, which are usually grown in pots, are not adapted to Pennsylvania winters and must be kept indoors. They can be moved outside during the spring and summer.

If the fungus gains a foothold in the eastern forests of the Appalachian Mountains, it could eventually kill the oaks, changing the forests like nothing since the fungal blight that all but wiped out the then-dominant American chestnut tree by 1960.

The fungus attacks oaks through their bark, causing girdling of the trunks, bleeding cankers, crown dieback and eventually death of the trees. There is no known cure.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an alert and quarantine of Monrovia Nursery, a major California wholesale shipper of plants and trees, in March.

The department is continuing its search for suspect plants shipped into Pennsylvania from infected California nurseries. While the disease kills oak trees, it can be carried on other plant hosts, including camellias, rhododendrons and viburnums, that provide pathways for the spread of the fungus.

"Department staff remain committed to finding and testing the suspect plants that have come into Pennsylvania over the past year," said Wolff. "We need to hear from people in four of our southeastern counties -- Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery -- who purchased camellias from nurseries."

Walt Blosser, the state's plant inspection program specialist, said about 50 people who received letters from the USDA because they had purchased plants from California or through the mail contacted the state Department of Agriculture.

"We've sampled as many of the plants as we could lay our hands on and the one plant is the only one that has tested positive so far," Blosser said.

He said the state will participate in a national sudden oak death survey that targets both nurseries and forested areas around nurseries that may have received plants from California.