Just a quick post to pose a question to those growing Japanese White Pine in Australia. This year THIS TREE has come out in a mass of flowers.

The pink flower buds glow against the blue of the foliage and it looks almost as brash as an azalea!

I had thought that it was due to me feeding it heavily since its re-styling. It had previously suffered some sunburn and had a multitude of weak shoots that i was trying to strengthen and encourage back budding on. I had thought that the flowers were a by-product of this aggressive feeding but as i chatted to some other local growers they were experiencing the same mass flowering at much heavier rates than previous years.

It seems that this year is a mass flowering event. I am guessing that there is a perfect alignment of seasonal conditions, temps and weather which has triggered this across at least my state here in Victoria. But I do know of at least one other tree in Sydney that is doing the same.

Are you seeing the same thing on White Pines in your gardens? Comment below as i would be interested to hear if this is a widely occurring event.

It seems to effect what i am assuming is the most common Japanese White pine in Australia and found most often in nurseries, that being the ‘glauca’ variety, but i think other of the white pines with needles on the blue end of the spectrum may also be effected? I would be keen to hear if you are experiencing it on other white pine varieties too.

Of course the outcome of this flowering is that each shoot will end up with a bare ‘neck’ where the flowers were leaving a gap between last years growth and the new needles. I will be looking for buds to prune back to in Autumn to remove these necks were i can.