If you have a long needle pine tree that has shown minor signs of stress during this record breaking summer of heat and drought, you aren’t dealing with pine wilt, District Forester Jim Strine, Hays, told the Barton County Commission this week.
The weather condition and age may well have caused stress to your introduced pine species.
It may even have weakened it to the point that it will be more susceptible to the disease next spring.
But when a tree contracts pine wilt, it shuts down and dies. Strine said he can tell by looking at the tree if it is some other stress.
According to information from the Kansas Department of Agriculture, “the infected tree begins to wilt and needles turn a dull green.
If conditions are hot and dry, the tree rapidly dies with needles turning brown and no resin flow. Some trees die slowly up to three months of infection if conditions are not stressful.”
Strine told the commissioners that infected trees cannot be saved. There is no treatment. What needs to be done is remove them and he urged he will work with the Barton County Extension Office to identify diseased trees and help their owners understand how they need to be removed.
Since 95 percent of Kansas pine trees are introduced species, Strine said the state will experience the loss of a lot of those trees.
Native pine species are resistant to the disease.
Strine told the commissioners that he’s spotted diseased pines southwest of Great Bend, in the community and in Claflin. “They’ve got a serious problem at Bissell’s Point,” he added.
“The citizens of the county need to be aware of the disease,” he said. “It’s in the county. In my opinion, it will always be in the county.”
The infected trees can, after they have been removed, be buried. They can also be chipped, since that causes the wood to dry out and the insects to die. Or the wood can be burned.
It can be used for firewood, but Strine said it is crucial for people to understand all of the infected wood must be burned before the first part of May, or the insects will emerge and infect healthy pines.
It is hoped that land owners will take responsibility for the removal of infected trees, so that the disease spreads as slowly as possible. But the state and local governments do have recourse, Strine explained.
There are regulations for the removal of “nuisance trees,” but county and state officials are hoping they can encourage residents to participate in the continuing public effort to get the infected trees cleaned up.