Pitch canker of pine: what the agencies record

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It lists what the sources record about pitch canker of pine and does not diagnose any tree. It describes a reporting duty and an infestation zone, so the exact wording is on the pages linked below. The list of other diseases is on the tree diseases page, and the reporting lines are in the United Kingdom report-a-pest guide.

At a glance

Item	What the sources say
Pathogen	Fusarium circinatum, a fungus, also named Gibberella circinata in older texts.
Hosts	Forest Research says all pine species can be affected and lists slash, longleaf, patula, radiata, loblolly and Virginia pine as the main native hosts in North America. It records occasional, limited damage on Douglas fir. University of California IPM says Monterey pine is the most widely affected host in California.
Where	Forest Research lists 12 south-eastern states of the USA and coastal California, Mexico, Haiti, Chile, South Africa (nurseries only), Japan, Korea, and France, Italy, Spain and Portugal in Europe. It says that France and Italy were considered to have eradicated it as of the page read on October 8, 2026. University of California IPM says first seen in California in Santa Cruz County in 1986 and, per the page read on October 8, 2026, in 18 coastal counties.
Status in the United Kingdom	Not present, and notifiable. Forest Research says anyone who suspects a case outside plant or wood trade premises must report it immediately to the plant health authorities.
Report to	Great Britain: TreeAlert. Northern Ireland: TreeCheck. Trade premises: the plant health authority for the country. See the United Kingdom guide.

How the sources say it spreads

Forest Research says spores travel by wind, fog or rain and enter trees or seedlings through wounds from hail, wind damage, branch removal or insect damage, or through the roots, and that the fungus can live for more than a year in wood. University of California IPM names engraver beetles, twig beetles, cone beetles and deathwatch beetles as insects able to carry the fungus during exploratory feeding. It says the fungus moves on infected wood and in soil or seed, and that infected Douglas-fir seedlings or cuttings can carry it without symptoms. It also ties heavier disease near the California coast to fog, which supplies the moisture the fungus needs to infect shallow insect wounds. Forest Research adds that the fungus can infect pine seeds and then cause damping-off in seedlings.

Symptoms as the sources state them

Seedlings. Forest Research and the field guide describe damping-off: needles turn red, brown or pale and die from the base up, or the whole seedling dies. The field guide says seedling infection can also show no symptoms.
Crown. Forest Research says aerial infection yellows needles that turn red and drop, with shoot dieback, and that repeated infections can lead to significant crown dieback. University of California IPM says girdled branch tips wilt and the needle clusters eventually fall, leaving bare branch ends.
Resin and bark. Both sources describe cankers with resin bleeding on shoots, branches and trunk. University of California IPM says removing the bark shows honey-coloured, resin-soaked wood, and that main-stem cankers usually appear after the tree already has several branch infections. Forest Research says female cones on infected branches may abort before full size.
Roots. Forest Research says above-ground symptoms may not show until the pathogen reaches the crown and girdles the stem. The field guide describes brown discolouration and breakdown of the root cortex.
Season. University of California IPM, in its pitch moth note, contrasts normal late-summer needle shed with pitch canker, which it says can cause dying yellow and red needles at any time of year.

Look-alikes and lab confirmation

The field guide has a table of damaging agents with similar symptoms: other Fusarium species, damping-off agents, shoot and canker fungi such as Diplodia and Gremmeniella, needle fungi such as Dothistroma, and insects. It says some pathogens cause symptoms indistinguishable or extremely similar and that laboratory analysis should always be carried out to confirm the pathogen, with the edge of a lesion the key place to sample. University of California IPM says insects and other pathogens can mimic the signs, that the disease can usually be diagnosed from symptoms, and that a definite identification needs the diseased tissue to be grown in a laboratory. The related needle disease has its own page: Dothistroma needle blight.

What the agencies publish for control and regulation

University of California IPM says not all infected trees become severely diseased and some recover, that trees in places where the disease has been established for a decade or more tend to resist it better, and that it therefore calls for a conservative approach to removing diseased trees. It says that on a tree with only a few infections, taking off the symptomatic branches can clear the disease, though pruning does not slow it in stands where it is well established. It notes that the California State Board of Forestry set a zone of infestation covering most of coastal California and that local rules may apply to moving potentially infested material out of it. Forest Research points to a pest alert and field guide for identification. For moving wood in general, see moving wood and firewood. Who may apply pesticides is covered on the pesticide licences page.

Credit

The Forest Research material, including its field guide, was read under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and is restated here in our own words.