Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shoveling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking. Examples of draft-animal-powered or mechanized work include ploughing, rototilling, rolling with cultipackers or other rollers, harrowing, and cultivating with cultivator shanks (teeth).
Rusts are plant diseases caused by pathogenic fungi of the order Pucciniales.
Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta, also known as Coniferophyta or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All extant conifers are perennial woody plants with secondary growth. The great majority are trees, though a few are shrubs. Examples include cedars, Douglas-firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews. As of 1998, the division Pinophyta was estimated to contain eight families, 68 genera, and 629 living species.
Armillaria is a genus of fungi that includes the A. mellea species known as honey fungi that live on trees and woody shrubs. It includes about 10 species formerly categorized summarily as A. mellea. Armillarias are long-lived and form the largest living fungi in the world. The largest known organism covers more than 3.4 square miles (8.8 km2) in Oregon's Malheur National Forest and is estimated to be 2,500 years old. Some species of Armillaria display bioluminescence, resulting in foxfire.
A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea, a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. Picea is the sole genus in the subfamily Piceoideae. Spruces are large trees, from about 20 to 60 m tall when mature, and have whorled branches and conical form. They can be distinguished from other members of the pine family by their needles (leaves), which are four-sided and attached singly to small persistent peg-like structures on the branches, and by their cones, which hang downwards after they are pollinated. The needles are shed when 4–10 years old, leaving the branches rough with the retained pegs. In other similar genera, the branches are fairly smooth.
A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry, or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sell to the general public; wholesale nurseries, which sell only to businesses such as other nurseries and commercial gardeners; and private nurseries, which supply the needs of institutions or private estates. Some will also work in plant breeding.
A conifer cone is a seed-bearing organ on gymnosperm plants. It is usually woody, ovoid to globular, including scales and bracts arranged around a central axis, especially in conifers and cycads. The cone of Pinophyta contains the reproductive structures. The woody cone is the female cone, which produces seeds. The male cone, which produces pollen, is usually herbaceous and much less conspicuous even at full maturity. The name "cone" derives from Greek konos, which also gave name to the geometric cone. The individual plates of a cone are known as scales. The umbo of a conifer cone refers to the first year's growth of a seed scale on the cone, showing up as a protuberance at the end of the two-year-old scale.
Larix laricina, commonly known as the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch, is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and also south into the upper northeastern United States from Minnesota to Cranesville Swamp, West Virginia; there is also an isolated population in central Alaska. The word akemantak is an Algonquian name for the species and means "wood used for snowshoes".
Silviculture is the practice of controlling the growth, composition/structure, and quality of forests to meet values and needs, specifically timber production.
Picea glauca, the white spruce, is a species of spruce native to the northern temperate and boreal forests in North America. Picea glauca is native from central Alaska all through the east, across western and southern/central Canada to the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, and south to Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Upstate New York and Vermont, along with the mountainous and immediate coastal portions of New Hampshire and Maine, where temperatures are just barely cool and moist enough to support it. There is also an isolated population in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. It is also known as Canadian spruce, skunk spruce, cat spruce, Black Hills spruce, western white spruce, Alberta white spruce, and Porsild spruce.
Cronartium ribicola is a species of rust fungus in the family Cronartiaceae that causes the disease white pine blister rust. Other names include: Rouille vésiculeuse du pin blanc pin (French), white pine Blasenrost (German), moho ampolla del pino blanco (Spanish).
Choristoneura fumiferana, the eastern spruce budworm, is a species of moth of the family Tortricidae native to the eastern United States and Canada. The caterpillars feed on the needles of spruce and fir trees. Eastern spruce budworm populations can experience significant oscillations, with large outbreaks sometimes resulting in wide scale tree mortality. The first recorded outbreaks of the spruce budworm in the United States occurred in about 1807, and since 1909 there have been waves of budworm outbreaks throughout the eastern United States and Canada. In Canada, the major outbreaks occurred in periods circa 1910–20, c. 1940–50, and c. 1970–80, each of which impacted millions of hectares of forest. Longer-term tree-ring studies suggest that spruce budworm outbreaks have been recurring approximately every three decades since the 16th century, and paleoecological studies suggest the spruce budworm has been breaking out in eastern North America for thousands of years.
Melampsora medusae is a fungal pathogen, causing a disease of woody plants. The infected trees' leaves turn yellowish-orange. The disease affects mostly conifers, e.g. the Douglas-fir, western larch, tamarack, ponderosa, and lodgepole pine trees, but also some broadleaves, e.g. trembling aspen and poplars. Coniferous hosts are affected in late spring through early August, and trembling aspens and poplars from early summer to late fall. It is one of only two foliage rusts that occur naturally in British Columbia.
Caloscypha is a fungal genus in the family Caloscyphaceae. A monotypic genus, it contains the single species Caloscypha fulgens, commonly known as the spring orange peel fungus, the golden cup, or the dazzling cup. It is a cup fungus, typically up to 4 centimetres in diameter, with a bright to pale orange interior and orange; specimens that are old or bruised often have an olive-green discoloration, especially around the edges. In North America, it is usually found on the ground in forest litter near conifers. Fruiting occurs in early spring following snow melt. The asexual (imperfect), or conidial stage of C. fulgens is the plant pathogenic species Geniculodendron pyriforme, known to infect dormant seeds of the Sitka spruce.
Cydia strobilella, the spruce seed moth, is a moth of the family Tortricidae. It is found in Europe.
Dendroctonus rufipennis, the spruce beetle, is a species of bark beetle native to British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Northern Manitoba, the Yukon, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Maine. They are known to destroy forests of spruce trees including Engelmann, White, Sitka, and Colorado blue spruce. Adults average 4 to 7 mm in length.
Dioryctria reniculelloides, the spruce coneworm, is a moth of the family Pyralidae. The species was first described by Akira Mutuura and Eugene G. Munroe in 1973. It is found from Nova Scotia to Alaska, south in the east to New York, and south in the west to California and New Mexico. It was recorded from China in 2009. Occasionally abundant, often in conjunction with epidemics of the spruce budworm, the spruce coneworm occurs through most or all of the range of spruce in North America, feeding on new foliage and cones of spruce, and often balsam fir. When abundant, it can be a serious pest "particularly on white spruce".
Spruce broom rust or yellow witches' broom rust is a fungal plant disease caused by the basidiomycete fungus known as Chrysomyxa arctostaphyli. It occurs exclusively in North America, with the most concentrated outbreaks occurring in northern Arizona and southern Colorado on blue and Engelmann spruce, as well as in Alaska on black and white spruce. This disease alternates its life cycle between two hosts, with the spruce serving as the primary host and bearberry serving as the secondary or alternate host. The name for the disease comes from the distinctive “witches broom”, commonly yellow in color, which forms on the spruce after young needles have been infected. Management must be carried out through physical or mechanical methods, such as the pruning of brooms or the removal of the secondary host from the area, because no chemical control measures have yet been determined to be economically effective. Generally, spruce broom rust is seen as a mostly cosmetic issue, and it is very rarely the direct cause of tree death; however, research has shown a reduction in overall productivity and health of infected trees, making it an important issue for logging and timber companies.
Chrysomyxa weirii, is a fungus that causes a disease, commonly known as Weir's cushion rust, of spruce trees. It is mostly a cosmetic problem, causing yellowish spotting and banding on spruce needles, but in some cases can cause severe premature defoliation. Weir’s cushion rust can also disfigure and reduce growth of spruce trees by targeting the tender needles of newly emerging shoots. This pathogen's spores are spread by wind and water splash and germinate to infect newly developing needles on the same spruce, or neighboring spruce trees. Unlike many other rust disease pathogens, C. weirii is autoecious, only infecting spruce trees. C. weirii is also microcyclic, producing only two of the five possible spore stages common in rust fungi. Trees affected by Weir's cushion rust usually have obvious symptoms, but if treated correctly, the disease can be managed.
Megastigmus atedius is a species of minute wasp that feeds on white spruce seed and cones. The damage it causes is largely undetected because the larvae complete their development hidden inside the seeds, which reveal no external indication of this. Although species of Megastigmus are said to be host-specific, the spruce seed chalcid found near Fairbanks, Alaska, was identified by E.H. Holsten and others in 1980 as M. piceae, while A.H. Rose and O.H. Lindquist applied the name Megastigmus piceae, but gave the authority as Rohwer.
