Pine tree

It is believed that the first exhibit of the Kunstkamera was a part of a pine tree, the side branch of which, having cleverly twisted, grew into the trunk. A branch with a fragment of the trunk can still be seen in the museum. Even so, the tree cannot be called ordinary. However, in the Latin version, its name is forest pine (Pinus sylvestris).

This tree grows everywhere and is familiar to many. She is rarely confused with other evergreen giants. Unless with spruce, especially when these magnificent trees are still at a young age, up to 15-20 years old. It’s just that the silhouette is similar. And few people pay attention to the length and color of the needles. By the way, pine forests are classified as light coniferous, and if spruce predominates, this is already a dark coniferous forest.

The height of adult specimens of Scotch pine is 20 – 30 m (1), and this may not be the limit.

Scotch pine forms

In suburban areas, common pine is planted by digging a tree somewhere on the side of the road. Or they leave a pine seedling in the garden, which suddenly appeared on its own, from a seed that arrived from the nearest forest.

But in dachas, in city squares and parks, you can much more often see a non-natural form of Scots pine, and not subtypes characteristic of, for example, the Balkans, Karelia or Mongolia. There are more compact and pretty “relatives” bred by breeders. They are usually used for landscaping (2).

Popular and widespread variety with a columnar crown shape Fastigiata, compact (up to 4 – 7 m) Watereri, dwarfish Globose Green и girl.

Scotch pine has decorative forms with atypical coloring of needles. With golden – aura и Wintergold, with bluish-gray – Bonn и glauc.

Scotch pine care

Scotch pine is a viable tree, but some of its features should still be taken into account when growing.

Ground

It is easy to guess that Scotch pine is loyal to almost any soil composition. Indeed, in nature, it grows on sands, sandy loams, loams, heavy clays. Even on stones with the thinnest, a few millimeters, fertile layer! The ability to cling to the slope with roots, fixing the creeping soil, is often used in landscaping sloping areas (shores of lakes and rivers, slopes of ravines).

Varietal pines, favorites of summer residents and landscape designers, are more demanding than the natural look (3).

Lighting

Both species plants and varieties of Scotch pine are very photophilous. Even in a not very pronounced shade, the crown becomes looser and not as beautiful as in sunny places. 

But the loss of decorativeness is not the saddest thing. In the shade, the pine tree weakens, can get sick and become easy prey for pests. So planting any pine trees in the shade is pointless.

Watering

Mature pines are drought tolerant. They can even do without watering in the heat. The exception is newly planted plants, especially large ones, as well as some compact varieties with shallow roots.

It is undesirable to plant pines in wetlands, although in nature these types of conifers are still found in damp places.

fertilizers

Pines are less demanding on soil nutrition than many evergreens. So, it is not necessary to apply fertilizers for these plants at their summer cottage. On the contrary, excessive “nutrition”, for example, if it is fresh manure or there is a lot of nitrogen in the mineral fertilizer, can harm plants. Especially when making at the end of summer and later.

Feeding

Sometimes in the soil there is a deficiency of some element important for plants, one or several at once. In this case, usually once a season or less often, in the spring, after the snow melts, the plantings are fed, introducing a suitable complex fertilizer for conifers. Or they resort to a highly specialized tool, which includes a microelement (boron, manganese, etc.), the lack of which must be filled.

Reproduction of Scots pine

There are 3 ways to propagate Scotch pine.

Seeds. The easiest way to propagate is by seed. This is how pine trees are propagated in forestry. It happens that ripe pine seeds, thanks to a small (up to 20 mm) wing, scatter quite far from the parent tree. After a year, two or more, many germinate. So don’t be surprised if you find a young pine out of sight of the pine forest.

Do you want to sow Scotch pine seeds yourself? To begin with, they need to be removed from the cones that have formed, ripened and are just beginning to open. The optimal time for collecting pine cones is autumn (September and October).

The cones are laid out in 1 – 2 layers on a newspaper or placed in a large plate, bowl, or a pillowcase-type cloth bag. Keep several days in a dry, warm place, stirring occasionally. After a few days, the seeds themselves will fall out of the cones. It is advisable to sow them immediately, before winter, so that they undergo natural stratification. Then the germination will be friendly, and the seedlings will be healthier. Sow in a prepared sunny or slightly shaded area. They are deepened by 2 – 3 cm. Sowing is preferable in rows, and not randomly, with a distance between seeds of 15 cm. You can sow more densely, but with the expectation that thinning will be carried out in a timely manner.

After 1 – 2 years, pine seedlings can be planted in a permanent place. Or reschool, that is, seat more spaciously, for further growing.

Transplantation in spring or early autumn is easily tolerated by young specimens of Scots pine, thanks to a superficially located root system. Later, when the height of the trees reaches about 1,5 m, a tap root system begins to form, which is more difficult to preserve when excavated. But even in this case, with careful transplantation and subsequent care, the adaptation of young pines in a new place is most often successful.

Propagation of Scots pine varieties by sowing seeds does not justify itself, since seedlings rarely repeat the varietal characteristics of the original variety. But sowing seeds is practiced to develop new decorative forms.

Cuttings. Propagation of Scots pine by cuttings and layering is associated with a number of difficulties, so it is rarely resorted to. Cuttings are started in the spring before the active growth of new shoots begins. Cuttings 10-15 cm long are taken from vertically growing shoots of young plants. They should be with a “heel”, that is, in the lower part of last year’s shoot there is a piece of the year before last year’s wood.

The lower parts of the cuttings are washed in water for 1-3 hours to remove the resin. Then they are treated with root formation stimulants and planted in a greenhouse, ideally with bottom heating. Rooting is long, the percentage of rooted cuttings is small. Planting of rooted shoots is carried out in the fall of the next year or later.

Inoculation. To obtain decorative forms, propagation of varietal pines, grafting is often used. It is grafted plants that we often see in nurseries.

Interestingly, for grafting and breeding new varieties of conifers, including pines, not only parts of already recognized (and registered) varieties are used, but also the so-called witch’s brooms found in nature.

Diseases of Scots pine

How the pines in the forest get sick, we usually do not notice. But in urban plantings, and even more so if suddenly some kind of misfortune happened to a pine tree in a suburban area, the problem sooner or later becomes apparent.

True, it is not always possible to determine what exactly happened to the tree, especially at the initial stage of the lesion. And choosing drugs for treatment or other methods of struggle is not always easy. The diseases of pines and other conifers are very different from the problems of the same apple or currant!

Scotch pine and its cultivars are affected by several species of schütte, rust fungus, and other infections. So, they distinguish between ordinary pine and snow shutte. In the first case, the needles become reddish, black dots (stripes) appear on them. For needles affected by snow shute, a light gray tint is characteristic.

Very similar are needle rust and infection, which is often called pine spinner. With rust, the needles turn brown, dry out, but do not fall off for a long time. And the pine spinner mainly “works” with shoots. Infected parts of young branches, if they do not die off, may eventually twist, taking on bizarre shapes.

It is better not to bring the infection to a greater spread, otherwise you can lose the plants. At the first signs of a fungal infection (pine spinner, rust, shute, etc.), treatment with copper-containing preparations begins. For example, Bordeaux liquid (1% solution), as well as XOM, Agiba-Peak preparations. Can stop the development of infection Topaz, biofungicides Alirin-B, Gliocladin, Fitosporin (4).

Plantings (including soil under plants) will have to be sprayed with preparations repeatedly, at least 3-4 times a season. They start in the spring after the snow melts. Pauses between treatments from 5-7 days. Before that, in compact low specimens, it is necessary to remove and destroy dead needles, branches heavily affected by the infection.

Scotch pine pests

The list of coniferous pests also includes the well-known aphids, scale insects, spider mites, and representatives of the fauna, “specializing” mainly in pines. Some eat needles, others feed on juice, others make passages in the bark and in deeper layers of wood, etc.

Shchitovki. They are easy to identify and appear on plants as plaques, raised warts, or nearly flat rounded lentil-like formations. 

It is not easy to cope with a pest, although it openly “grazes” on needles. It is unlikely that it will be possible to collect scale insects firmly attached to the needles, and finding everyone is an impossible task. So there is only one option – a chemical attack. Aktara, Aktellik (4) will help. These same preparations are good if aphids attacked the pines and conventional folk remedies cannot cope with it.

Spider mite. In the fight against spider mites, a dangerous pest that, when massively distributed in a hot, dry summer, entangles the shoots with a thin whitish web, priority is given to other tactics. 

To begin with, it is worth resorting to sprinkling crowns. It is necessary to sprinkle, and try to moisten the branches from below, as well as all hard-to-reach places in the depths of dense crowns of varietal pines. After all, it is there that the spider mite sits, a small pest, which most often cannot be seen without a magnifying glass.

If regular water procedures for several weeks obviously did not help, they switch to the use of special preparations, including narrowly targeted ones, specifically against ticks (acaricides). Also, agents that act on a wide range of garden pests are effective against spider mites. This is Fitoverm, Aktellik (4).

Pine sawfly. In recent years, in many pine forests of the middle zone in the summer, one can notice a very unpleasant pest – the pine sawfly. Many caterpillars in groups of several dozen occupy pine needles and actively eat it. The spectacle, when observed from a close distance, is eerie, even the most disgusting. Caterpillars are very mobile and voracious, moreover, there are a lot of them on pine shoots. Sometimes they eat all the old needles (they start with it) and only then proceed to the young, newly formed needles.

Summer residents are increasingly complaining about the pine sawfly, which damages both ordinary and varietal pines. If manual collection or knocking caterpillars to the ground with a strong pressure of water does not help, Aliot, Pinocide, Aktara, Lepidocid can be used to eradicate the pest. And gently loosen the near-trunk circles under the trees in the fall, trying not to damage the roots.

Popular questions and answers

We talked about growing Scots pine with agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mikhailova.

Sources of 

1. Aleksandrova M.S. Coniferous plants in your garden // Moscow, CJSC “Fiton +”, 2000 – 224 p.

2. Markovsky Yu.B. The best conifers in garden design // Moscow, CJSC Fiton +, 2004 – 144 p.

3. Gostev V.G., Yuskevich N.N. Designing gardens and parks // Moscow, Stroyizdat, 1991 – 340 p.

4. State catalog of pesticides and agrochemicals permitted for use on the territory of the Federation as of July 6, 2021 // Ministry of Agriculture of the Federation

https://mcx.gov.ru/ministry/departments/departament-rastenievodstva-mekhanizatsii-khimizatsii-i-zashchity-rasteniy/industry-information/info-gosudarstvennaya-usluga-po-gosudarstvennoy-registratsii-pestitsidov-i-agrokhimikatov/