HISTOLOGICAL STUDIES OF SYMPTOMS IN SEMIMATURE-TISSUE NEEDLE BLIGHT OF EASTERN WHITE PINE

Abstract

The incipient symptoms of needle blight of eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) appear only in semimature tissues of current year needles, and the orange-red lesions then spread acropetally throughout adjacent, more mature, tissues. Semimature tissue of white pine needles is characterized by the start of the suberization of the radial and transverse walls of the endodermal cells. The first cells to break down in blighted semimature tissue occur in the mesophyll region of one of the ventral faces of the needle. Mesophyll necrosis spreads laterally to the other ventral face and finally to the dorsal face of the needle, before proceeding distally through mature tissue. Anatomical differences exist between needles collected from susceptible and non-susceptible white pines.