What Is The Specialities Of Spruce Trees That People Enjoy?

Spruce trees, particularly Colorado blue, Koster blue and Norway have been planted extensively in private and public landscape programs

. People enjoy the symmetrical cone shape, the slender spires and the year-round color of the foliage.

Much of the beauty of these trees depends upon a complete cover of green or blue-green from the ground upward to the tip of the leader. Anything that kills the branches, and thereby interrupts the symmetry of form and color, is a threat to the use of spruce for landscape purposes. A disease known as Cytospora canker of spruce, which causes branches to die slowly, is becoming increasingly common in the East.

Spruce trees are really forest trees, and consequently are accustomed to rather specific soil and climatic environments. When used as ornamentals, they are grown under strange and often adverse conditions. Thus, they frequently lose their vigor, and become subject to infectious diseases. The fungus, Cytospora kunzei, which causes spruce canker, finds these weakened, trees favorable subjects for attack.

Spruce canker is an insidious disease. By the time its first symptom is visible to the casual observer, the fungus is usually well established, and some irreparable damage has occurred.

The lower branches of spruce trees are commonly attacked first, perhaps because they are more subject to mechanical wounds, and also because moisture conditions are more favorable for the fungus in the lower level of evergreens. Soon after infection, a localized area of the diseased branch swells slightly, and pitch begins to ooze out. Eventually the mass of pitch becomes rather large, and starts to drip on the branches beneath and upon the ground.

At this stage, the needles of the diseased branch slowly turn yellow and soon die, accompanied by the death of the branch. It is then that the gardener or owner of the tree is most apt to discover the diseased condition. Prior to this, however, the fungus has formed reproductive germs (spores) which are capable of causing diseased areas on other branches. These localized diseased areas are called cankers. Unless the disease is brought under control, dead branches will increase in number, gradually appearing at higher levels until the tree becomes unsightly and useless for landscape purposes.

by: Keith Markensen.

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