Whats wrong with this Blue Spruce tree?

[Sapling]

I have attached a few pictures of a Blue Spruce branch. It was taken from a tree in an urban yard in Alberta, Canada. There are 2 trees beside each other which are exhibiting this discolouration and it is pretty much on only one side. Does anyone know what might be wrong with this tree?

 

[ATH]

Could it be drought injury?

Browsing through a couple of things, there aren't a lot of problems that affect the outter-most growth. Spruce needle rust is one of those, but I'm not sure it is always so uniform...

 

[treemandan]

Looks like maybe something was sprayed on it. Road salt or maybe something else. I damaged a tree by cutting black walnut boards on a table saw. Where the dust got on it it had died back.

 

[ATH]

Blue spruce is pretty tolerant of salt spray. Not that it won't damage them...but not like white pine. If it were another species salt spray isn't a bad suggestion (not that it is a 'bad' suggestion here, but just less likely).

 

[Ed Roland]

Start here and Google your way out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin

 

[Sapling]

Thanks for the input! I was thinking it may be rust, but some type of spray, wind or sun had crossed my mind as well. I read that Labrador Tea is a host for rust and there are some green spaces nearby but the needles don't seem to have any spores or anything on them. The trees are south / south-east facing. The discolouration is all the way up the side of the trees but a little more concentrated at the bottom (the thickest part of the tree). The discolouration is not uniform but blotchy. If anyone is interested, I can send the house address and you can look at the trees on Google Earth's street view. Only thing is the trees are not showing any discolouration in the photos. Another note, this browning was evident last year and is worse this year.
Thoughts?

 

[Sapling]

Thanks Woodweasel. That's pretty interesting stuff. I will have a closer look at the link!

 

[Greenleaf]

Came across a lot of this in our area a few springs ago and identified it as a rizosphaera needle cast. From your pictures it seems to be the same symptoms and is fairly common for blue spruce after periods of wet and warm weather. We found that pruning infected branches or spraying with a fungicide such as Daconil seemed to help. But a few nurseries where there were rows infected had to remove entire trees to stop the spread.

 

[Sapling]

Thank you very much Greenleaf!!!!!!
We have had some fairly mild weather, particularly this past year. And the previous was pretty wet. I will look into this a little further.
Again, thanks!!

 

[S Mc]

We were just at a site on Friday that had Picea pungens with seemingly identical symptoms.

One tree was heavily damaged on one side (client disclosed that a vine had taken over the tree and was removed last year). The vine might have contributed to a suitable environment for the pest.

Other P. pungens on the property were displaying scattered locations of discoloration, rather than concentrated such as the tree with the vine.

I must confess my mind immediately went to Rhizospaera as well, but a sample displayed no picnidia at all. In fact no signs of canker, resinosous, nothing, nada, nilch, that would suggest someting fungal. At this time of year, I would expect something to be apparent. (A sample will be going to a lab for confirmation, though.)

We did find mite eggs...

I will be interested to hear what you find out and will let you know what the lab people report back to us.

 

[Sapling]

That would be great to know considering your location in comparison to mine. I look forward to hearing what you discover, I will do the same.
Thanks!!

 

[Urban Forester]

I see this alot.. if the branches affected were facing south/southwest, they were warmed by the winter sun, causing respiration, then cold nights froze the individual cells causing death. The random nature of needle death indicates a non-pathogenic problem. If it were rhizospheara you would be able to see black fungal spores in the stomata running in longitudinal lines. Considering its on new growth, (mostly '09) I think you have a classic case of "sun-induced cell death, i.e. winter injury.While technically P. pungens is a "northern tree" it doesn't really do that well where there are significant environmental temp shifts. Its one reason that cytospora canker isn't a problem in its "native" range, but is a huge problem in areas where temps rise and fall like the stock market. Most of these needles will shed, but I believe the tree will be fine. They are not really suseptible to salt, and a spray application (dormant oil) would leave a much darker bronze if the oil hadn't been mixed right or the spray hose hadn't been purged b4 spraying.

 

[S Mc]

I know that P. pungens can have issues out of their range, as any tree can, but here we are very close to their native habitat and they are a very popular landscape tree that habitually does well.

In our scenario none of the damage on the trees were on the south/southwest side.

Sylvia

 

[Sapling]

Hmmmmmm lots to ponder. We have chinooks here as we are in the foothills of the Rockies which can cause winter temps to become quite warm. But we also have our days (and weeks) of -25 and -30 degrees Celsius. Our weather does fluctuate quite a bit.