Effectively endemic on Indiana blue spruce. It is the single most common reason a blue spruce gets removed here. In Greenwood, two separate canopies in one city. The pre-1960 blocks around Old Town and near County Line Road hold Greenwood's only genuinely mature shade trees — just 9% of the housing stock predates 1960 — while the subdivisions east of I-65 are 2000s-era plantings still small enough to prune off a ladder. Ash is functionally gone: emerald ash borer has been confirmed in Indiana since April 2004 and is now in all 92 counties. Rhizosphaera needlecast is near-universal on mature blue spruce here.
Greenwood's canopy and what's at risk
Two separate canopies in one city. The pre-1960 blocks around Old Town and near County Line Road hold Greenwood's only genuinely mature shade trees — just 9% of the housing stock predates 1960 — while the subdivisions east of I-65 are 2000s-era plantings still small enough to prune off a ladder. Ash is functionally gone: emerald ash borer has been confirmed in Indiana since April 2004 and is now in all 92 counties.
What to look for
Needles browning and dropping from the bottom of the tree upward and from the inside out, leaving bare lower limbs.
Whether the tree can be saved
Rhizosphaera needlecast is near-universal on mature blue spruce here. Fungicide can hold the line on a tree that still has most of its canopy; a spruce that's bare halfway up is not coming back, because spruce doesn't refoliate old wood.
Timing in Johnson County
Two fungicide applications in spring, repeated for two to three consecutive years. Miss a year and it resets.
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