…. our beautiful Eastern White Pine is completely brown

When we moved into our house 35 years ago we inherited a small pine tree that was planted off to one side about half way into the backyard. Had we known how tall that tree would grow we might have transplanted it to back corner of the yard but we didn’t and over the years we had to trim the lower branches so that the tree didn’t take over the entire yard, push over the fence and damage our neighbours garage roof.

It grew higher than our two storey house and it can be seen miles away. Every year the needles of the White Pine turn brown and fall to the ground but before they fall new green needles have already replaced them. Except this year. Earlier in the summer I noticed that the tree looked different but my husband thought I was overly concerned. Two weeks ago my neighbours commented on how the tree was dying and the next day my husband expressed concern over the state of the tree.

I called the neighbourhood arborist and they came a couple of days later. They said that they had never seen anything like this. The Eastern White Pine has a life expectancy of about 100 to 200 years and ours couldn’t be more than 40 years old. They’re looking into it some more. They think that there may be some kind of insect infestation.

When my husband heard this he wondered if our neighbours new White Pine had infected our tree because it died last year and was replaced with a new one. Hmmm?

I can’t imagine our backyard without that magnificent specimen. Have any of you ever seen this happen to a pine tree?