NEED HELP- Austrian Pine & Arborveti turning brown

[hazmat]

ALL of our austrian pine & arborveti are turning yellow/brown. Are the just jealous of the fall colors - or do we have some kind of problem. I've never seen this before.

Pics attached

austrian pine

 

[hazmat]

close up

 

[hazmat]

arborveti

 

[hazmat]

arborveti close up

 

[chim]

A neighbor had a pine do that a couple years ago. Whatever it was went away without treatment. Theirs had several small branches go brown just like they died................chim

 

[beenthere]

Re: NEED HELP- Austrian Pine turning brown

Hazmat
The brown you see (I believe) is the two year old needle growth dying, leaving the one year old growth to remain through the winter. Next year, new needles will grow, and there will be the old and new ones until next fall. That is where the needles come from that litter the forest floor under the pine trees.

The arborvitae appear to be the same.

 

[Egon]

Re: NEED HELP- Austrian Pine turning brown

I'll concur with Beenthere. He has a lot of experience with trees.

Egon

 

[hwp]

Hazmat, I had a similar problem with Norwegian spruce over the last year. The needles would go brown and fall off. It usually seemed to start from the bottom of the tree and work up, but not always. I never did find out what the problem was but I found that if I cut off the dead limbs soon enough it would stop the spread of the problem. At one time I thought it was spruce needle cast, but the symptoms were not quite right for that. I completely lost two trees, the top half of another and several branches on others but it seems to be under control now. It has been at least two onths since I have noticed any further damage.

I also have about 400 feet of cedar hedge that is currently turning quite brown. I am hoping that it is a lack of water and will reverse when the fall rains come. However, I also had an infestation of some type of borer that got into the limbs of the cedar and killer them. The borers left little black circles where they penetrated the branches. I cut them out wherever I saw any evidence of their presence and that now also seems to be under control. The browning of the leaves seems to be from a different cause, which is why I am hoping it is lack of water.

 

[Inspector507]

Alot of the long needle pines around here have been doing that for the last 2 years.
I know you don't want to hear this, but I've lost 3 white pines, my neighbor lost 7 all in the last 2 years. I've even lost 2 dwarf Alberta Spruce. Same symptoms, all of a sudden, brown needles, then bare branches.

But of course this is just my experience in my area of the country.

 

[hazmat]

Re: NEED HELP- Austrian Pine turning brown

Beenthere,

My friend who is a landscape architect concurs with you. As you saw in the close up photo - the needles are turning on the outside of the trees. She did give me some things to look into for insects:

As far as the insects, it is the time of years that
bores tend to be active, so if you were to see some
small holes with pitch coming out of them either on
the trunk or braches, it could be them, but it is
unlikely the same bore would be at both types, but
still possible.

Also did you see any white poofs on the branches,
small and sort of furry, there are a lot of woolly
adelgids about since mid summer.

I guess I never noticed the pine trees turning color before. Makes sense that the ones on the ground need to come from somewhere. I guess I'll get nervous if the whole branch dies.

I kept my eye out on the way to work today - all the austrian pine looked the same.

Thanks for the re-assurance.