“Pine trees do have leaves that change color and fall,” said Vic Ford, a forester who heads up agriculture and natural resources for the Cooperative Extension Service, the outreach arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “People forget that those needles are a pine tree’s leaves.” 

Ford said Arkansans may be seeing a lot of brown needles on their trees. After a round of Labor Day storms, many of those brown needles have hit the ground.

“Usually, pine foliage falls a little later than this, but drought has accelerated the process,” he said. “Pines lose their foliage every fall but trees usually keep one or two years’ worth of needles” for photosynthesis.

“The brown foliage that was lost would have been lost later in the fall if the high winds and drought had not occurred,” Ford said.

“These needles would have turned brown in a normal year due to senescence” — essentially old age, he said. “Droughts often will cause the two-year-old needles to prematurely senesce and will have a heavier amount of needle fall.”

How do you tell whether your pine tree is shedding needles abnormally?Ford said disease can also cause defoliation, “but signs and symptoms of the causal fungus will be apparent on the needles by the observation of leaf spots. Foliage diseases will cause all ages of needles to turn brown.”

Learn more through the fact sheet Pine needle diseases in Arkansas.To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.

About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. The Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service.

The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.