Shimpaku juniper foilage tips starting to go brown

[Alex_B]

So a few weeks ago when I was watering my trees I noticed the tips of some of my junipers foliage were starting to look a bit brown. I have heard before that junipers show signs of death weeks after they die and start going brown on the tips of the foliage so I checked the root ball to see if maybe I had been over watering it at all and the roots looked very healthy (from my understanding healthy roots are white but please correct me if I'm wrong).

I've attached some photos of the foliage from when I first noticed the tips were looking a bit brown in April compared to the photos I've taken today, I know the quality isn't amazing and you can't really see the brown tips from the mid April photos but hopefully you can make it out a bit.

So I guess my question is, is my juniper showing the first signs of death or is this something that happens when the junipers go dormant in winter? If this is early signs of death is there anything I can do to try and reverse this or is it already to late?

Apologies if this seems somewhat trivial but it's my first juniper so I'm still learning how to care for it.

[nathan987]

It looks completely normal to me. My junipers get a similar brown or almost purple hue at the very tips before they elongate.

I’d worry more if they went dry and brown and crunchy and were obviously dead.


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[shibui]

I see one tiny brown tip on the today photo so whatever it is is not too bad.
Winter brown usually shows up all over not just on the tips.
There are a few things that could cause brown tips.
1. mites. Tiny bugs that suck the sap
2. juniper blight? I'm not sure if this is actually in Australia but there was a previous post on Ausbonsai - https://www.ausbonsai.com.au/forum/view ... hp?t=27646 where fungicide was recommended.
3. scale insects. Again very small but usually affect older foliage rather than new tips.
there are probably more. You could use a fungicide a=or pesticide just in case but I would normally just watch this sort of problem to see if it really is a problem. Sometimes a few dead tips is not really an issue and may go away.

[Alex_B]

Thank you for the help, unfortunately reducing the size of the photos to fit on the forum has made it that you can't really see the brown tips.

The newer growth has a bit of a brown hue but tthere is some foliage that has gone a bit more dry brown. At first it seemed to be more contained but it looks like it has gone through a lot of the tree now so I wasn't sure whether this was signs of death of something that was due to a change in the seasons.

It might be mites but I'm not sure so I guess I will just keep and eye on it and see how it progresses.