How to encourage needles over flowers

[Nishant]

Hello Friends, My Scot pine has started giving lot of male flowers and thus resulting in a very few needles. The needles are long, possibly because they are so few? Any advise on how to encourage needles over flowers? Thanks in advance for your reponses.

 

[Paradox]

The tree is going to do what it's going to do in that respect. There is no way I know of to prevent it making flowers in the spring

 

[Nishant]

Thanks Paradox for reply. What I meant is that there must be some triggers that make it behave one way or the other. From what I have learnt about the pines, the number of needles and flowers are set in previous autumn itself. So my guess would be that better nitrogen content in autumn will prefer needles over flowers.

 

[MaciekA]

I've applied what most here would call "outrageously obscene and downright foolish" amounts of Osmocote to most of the species of pine that I grow. Multiple species ranging from the strobus subgenus, to contorta, to mugo / scots, to japanese black pine, ,etc, etc.

In these foolish experiments, I haven't seen a reduction in flowers at all. Actually, if anything, I think it might actually have increased my rate of pine flowering. Some of the most bat-shit ridiculous flower displays I've ever seen, on white pine in particular, have been in cases where I have used fertilizer doses well in excess of recommended amounts. I got "fractal cathedrals of flowering". Pines have a distinct habit of making hay while the sun is shining and when there is an opportunity for expansion and recruitment.

I think worrying about flowering is putting the cart before the horse and similar to worrying about long needles in early development. If you have too much vigor, you might be very far away from refinement anyway, so use that vigor to build a ramified canopy and a ramified root system while you still have the opportunity to do so.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Search google scholar for

"Plant growth regulators and cone induction in Pinaceae"
It seems that zeatin had some flower inhibition effects.