The Mount once a bare granite island is now inhabited by pines and many rhododendrons and azaleas. So far, the have latter have remained free of the wind-born phytophthora kernoviae which is a new and potentially serious pathogen of woodland environments. The disease was first discovered in 2003 in historic woodland gardens in the heart of Cornwall, where both large rhododendron bushes and beech trees appeared to be dying from a previously unknown fungal infection.
