Dad has lived in his house for 27 years. He had 35 gallons (seven 5-gallon buckets) of pine cones to pick up this spring, and he has never had this much. The weirder thing is the last two buckets the pine cones were soft.

Any Sigforumites know if soft pine cones are a symptom of a disease? I've Googled it and didn't see anything about soft pine cones being a disease symptom. Is there another explanation for soft pine cones.

Heavy cone production is usually associated with tree stress and they produce and drop cones to propagate themselves inmass. At least that is my take. Drought maybe?

There could be several reasons, and disease, bugs, or stress top the list. It also could be a mast year, or a bumper crop for cones. Douglas-fir averages every seven years or so for mast years. I don't know about pines. What are the other pines in the area doing.


The species would be helpful, some pines the cones take two years to mature, and others one year.

Soft cones are a mystery to me. I haven't used my pathology training in thirty years and I more than a little rusty so bear with me.

I don't know which species of pine. If I had to guess either white pine or red pine which are the two most common in the area. They were there when he bought the house 27 years ago so they're huge.

On the other side, over the years my parents planted 8 or 10 nicer pine tree varieties such as Douglass Fir and blue spruce. Dad said those are all normal amounts of pine cone and they're the usual hardness.

White pine has 5 needles in a clump, or fascicle. Red pine has 2 needles per fascicle.

I hear you on trying to find cone diseases on the net, pretty sparse information.

Not sure on your issue but I will reply that we have been at our house for 30 years and have never seen as many cones as we have this year! My whole 1/4 mile street is covered in them!

My huge ponderosa pine had a plethora of pine cones from last year to this.

I hope it's not dying because it would be a bitch to cut down.

Send an email to your county agricultural agent. He will know.