Grow and Care for Japanese Umbrella Pine

Grow Japanese umbrella pine in moist, acidic soil that drains, and keep it out of a drying winter wind. Japanese umbrella pine is Sciadopitys verticillata, also sold as umbrella pine.

Give it moist, acidic soil that drains, and shelter from winter wind

Japanese umbrella pine wants cool, humid air and soil that stays moist without turning into a bog. Site it in full sun in a mild summer, and give it afternoon shade where summers run hot. [1] It is not drought-tolerant, so a dry bank or a week of forgotten water in clay can kill a tree that looked settled. [2] Leave room for a 15- to 20-foot spread even though the first decade looks slow, about six to nine inches of new growth in a good year. [3]

Plant a container or balled-and-burlapped tree with the flare at the soil

Buy a nursery tree and plant it in spring or fall, when the soil is workable and the tree is not pushing a flush of new growth. Set the root flare at the soil line, or a little above it, so the hole cannot pond water against the bark. Water it in, then keep the first season from going dry.

1. Dig a hole about twice as wide as the root ball and no deeper than the ball itself.
2. Set the tree so the flare sits at the soil, or slightly above it. Do not bury the flare.
3. Backfill with the soil you took out. Mix in compost if the ground is poor, but do not make a wet sump in heavy clay.
4. Water thoroughly to settle the backfill, then spread two to three inches of mulch, pulled back several inches from the trunk.
5. Water whenever the top of the root zone dries through the first growing season, and during later droughts. This tree does not shrug off a dry month.

Winter bronze is normal, and brown crispy needles after spring are winter burn

Needles may dull or bronze in cold, bright weather and then green again when growth starts. That color change is not a death sentence. If the needles stay brown and crispy after new growth appears, winter wind dried them while the ground was frozen. Site the tree out of that wind in the first place. On a newly planted tree, water until the ground freezes, keep mulch off the trunk, and put a burlap screen on the windward side, about eight to twelve inches out from the branch tips, then take the screen down in spring. [4]

Keep one leader on a young tree, and do not cut into old brown wood

This tree needs little pruning. A young plant is safer with one central leader, because a narrow crotch packed with snow can split. Cut only dead, broken, or rubbing wood, and stop at wood that still has green needles. Old brown wood will not sprout a new skirt.

1. Wait until spring growth shows before you call a bronze branch dead.
2. Cut dead or storm-broken wood just outside the branch collar.
3. On a young tree, keep one upright leader. If two compete, cut the weaker one.
4. Do not shear it like a hedge, and do not cut back into wood that has no needles.

Not a true pine, and not the Italian stone pine sold as umbrella pine

Japanese umbrella pine is not a pine. The thick needles sit in whorls of about twenty to thirty at the shoot tips, like the spokes of an umbrella, instead of in the two-to-five needle bundles of a true pine. If the tag says pine and the plant is Pinus, read How to Grow Pine.

Italian stone pine (Pinus pinea) is also sold as umbrella pine and parasol pine. That tree is a true pine with an umbrella-shaped crown of branches, not spokes of needles, and it wants a hotter, drier Mediterranean site. Do not put this moist-soil Japanese tree in a stone-pine hole.

Parasol fir is a shop name for this plant, not a true fir. If the tag is fir, read How to Grow Fir. An umbrella plant in a living room is usually a Schefflera, not this outdoor conifer.

If the needles bronze in January and green again in spring, leave them. If they stay crispy after new growth, the wind got there first — move the next tree into shelter.