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What's killing my aunt's pines?

14 years ago

My aunt sent me this in an email to me about her dying pines:

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Starting at the ground the tree turns brown from the trunk to the needles, then slowly works it's way up. It dies gradually over the course of 2-3 years. I've had a couple of tree nursery people come out and look at them and all they could tell me was it wasn't bugs! Big help! I've noticed other trees like mine in this immediate are that are dying if the same thing. I have a Blue Spruce that's dying of it, too. However, my soft needle pines seem to be OK so it's affecting some pines but not all. Right now only the tips of the trees at the very top are still alive (they're all about 50-60' tall). I have no choice but to take them down. It's killing me.

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Any ideas? I'm growing some thujas for her, and I doubt they'll be vulnerable to whatever is killing her pines, but I'm sure she doesn't want to lose any more trees than she's already losing.

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Comments (9)

Karen Pease
Original Author
14 years ago
Hmm... I just did a bit of research, and I think Cytospora canker sounds likely. Thoughts?
wisconsitom
14 years ago
Need more ID on the pines, but yes, for Colorado blue spruce, quite likely to be cytospora. Sadly, if it is as far along as the OP indicates, probably too late for a remedy for this hard-to-control disease.

+oM
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downeast_gardener
14 years ago
Don't agree with the diagnosis. karenrei's description of the crown being the last to go pretty much rules out one of the Cytospora fungi as does the fact that neither karenrei nor the tree people she called in mentioned the canker that often clinches a Cytospora diagnosis.
pineresin
14 years ago
Need to find out what species of pine. If it is Scots Pine, Austrian Pine, Japanese Black Pine or Japanese Red Pine, or any other Eurasian pine species, pine wilt is a possibility.

Resin

Here is a link that might be useful: Pine wilt - Kansas State U factsheet
pineresin
14 years ago
Also the location would help!

Resin
wisconsitom
14 years ago
Cytospora, at least in virtually all cases I've seen, does indeed start low in the crown and progress upwards, as the OP describes. This does not mean we have a diagnosis, but the symptoms as described do point in that direction as a start in id'ing the spruce problem.

+oM
downeast_gardener
14 years ago
wisconsitom,

karenrei said that the needle losses begin at the ground and then work their way to the crown. It was for this reason that I questioned the Cytospora diagnosis. With the infected spruce that you've seen, has there been a visible canker?
Karen Pease
Original Author
14 years ago
I haven't seen the trees myself, so I can't say. I gave my aunt some info on Cytospora, and she thought that fit the symptoms to a T.

Too late for recovery, but at least she knows to avoid vulnerable species from now on. I imagine the thujas will do a lot better. Western Indiana isn't exactly thuja central, so Cedar Leaf Blight shouldn't be a significant risk factor.
wisconsitom
14 years ago
"Western Indiana isn't exactly thuja central, so Cedar Leaf Blight shouldn't be a significant risk factor."

Quite right, but.......some years ago, on a visit to Columbus, Ohio, we took a day trip to a place in S. Ohio called, I believe, The Seven Caves. Not too awfully far from Indiana. I was surprised and delighted to see there a mixture of Thuja occidentalis, Canada hemlock, and tulip trees, the latter of great size. Just thought I'd mention. BTW, a very scenic place to hike around, aside from the cheesy cave tours with their silly names for mineral formations, strings of cheap and unsafe looking electric lights, et al. Check it out if you're ever in that area.

+oM

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