Hello,
I noticed this white stuff on the needles a couple weeks ago and I'm thinking it's a scale of some sort. Here's a pic. This plant is at the curb and takes a lot of salt from the plow. I scraped off some of this substance to see if it was salt but it is not and underneath the white stuff is black gooey stuff. I'm thinking it's a sucking type insect of sorts, so as a precaution, I have already treated with a systemic insecticide good for scales. What do you all think?
I've only had to deal with scale a couple of times at the old place, but it wasn't nearly as pronounced as what your pine is showing. I think if it was that heavily salted it would be showing other problems by now, but I'm really not sure how susceptible Bosnian Pine is to salt spray. BTW, mine got burned pretty good this winter. It was just the top half, but I was surprised it wasn't a bit more adaptable to a good Z4 winter.
Well this isn't my pine's first rodeo. It was planted fall of '10 so it's used to the salt and this is the first time this has happened. Hopefully the systemic will start working soon and it will be fine. It would be great if someone here could confirm my thinking though.
