To make a long story short, pathogens known at the pinetum will be merely listed, with very little commentary. So far the pinetum, considering the large number and concentration of different species of pine trees growing out of their normal ranges in this one place, has had great success.
But there have been some problems – Pine tip moth, sawfly larva, aphids, round- head borers, Ips beetle, pine webworm, bagworm, pine needle scale, pine tortoise scale, needle cast, red-band needle blight, armillaria root rot, verticicladiella root decline and untold unrecognized others.
We won’t advise specific remedies for these problems, because general advice in a specific setting may be very wrong. In general, we have no philosophical bias against the use of chemicals when used wisely. The problem is that it sometimes turns out in retrospect that chemical use was probably unwise. Artificially sustaining a tree through the use of frequent chemical controls is not in line with our mission, which is to find those species which are readily adaptable to our sites.
Chemical pest and disease control at the Pinetum is infrequent, primarily limited to controlling bagworm through the use of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) – a biological control. Generally, we don’t try to push trees that have too many problems in our climate to be sustainable.