An Important Distinction: ‘Decandling’ and ‘Breaking’ Pine Shoots

This is an edited post from 2016 on a topic I get asked a lot—deciding whether to break or decandle a pine. 

For starters, let’s define decandling and breaking—

Breaking (or pinching) means taking part of the shoot off, usually with fingers, as the shoot is extending in early to mid-spring, and before the needles have come out.

Scots Pine candles at the ideal time to break them.

With the fleshy part of the fingers, bend the candle and break it off. Decide which candle to break according to its strength: take more off the stronger ones. Less off weaker. And leave the weakest alone.

Right candle broken approximately in half. Very important: be sure you don’t have a “neck” below where you’ve broken it, a section where no needles will come out. Scots Pine have almost no neck, but with other species, like Japanese White Pine, that neck can be half the candle length.

Left candle broken.

Decandling means cutting off the entire pine candle off in late spring. This is a later technique, and often the new needles have come out already.

Japanese Black Pine before decandling. (This photo is more than a month early for decandling—usually this shoot would have its needles out.)

With a sharp bud scissors, the candle is cut off at the base.

Notice the small candles at the base. These must also be cut. We’re trying to “reset the spring” by decandling, and so everything must be cut.

Both maintenance techniques are good—one isn’t cooler than another, we simply apply them to different pines. And both are generally used on older, established bonsai, not young stock.

Which species for what technique?

• Single flush pines—such as Japanese White, Lodgepole, Shore, Scots, Limber—should be pinched
• Multiple flush pines—such as Japanese Black and Japanese Red—should be decandled

What happens when we break candles? 

• With this early spring technique, needles that remain on the shoot continue to grow
• the pinched shoot is weakened while other, non-pinched shoots are strengthened
• over the summer buds set near the end of the pinched shoot, often between sets of needles, which then elongate the next spring

What happens when we decandle? 

• With this late spring technique, new shoots arise from the cut site, growing through the summer, with needles coming out and maturing in the early fall
• resets the spring and balances shoot energy
• gives a shortened growth cycle, which results in shorter needles

What happens if we decandle the wrong pine?

• Older single flush pines lack the energy to grow twice a year
• if we decandle a Japanese White pine, or a Lodgepole pine, or any other in that weaker group, it will grow buds that summer that don’t open up
• that means we just created a summer that didn’t produce any needles, and we’ve just weakened our pine

April 2026 Bulletin Board: 

• Errata: Mr. Shinji Suzuki is not presenting at the Portland Japanese Garden, but at the Portland Art Museum on July 19. Apologies for the confusion. The PJG is hosting his visit. Tickets are selling fast! Here’s some deets for the museum event: The Way of Bonsai