Hello. Attached you will find 3 pictures of a weeping white spruce planted in our yard. Gertens garden center "tree guy" said to contact you and send pictures before possibly stopping off at the U Center for plant disease with a branch sample / or mailing it. Background: Tree was purchased from a garden center and had been grown in a boxed crate. It was about 12 ft + high at the time of purchase. Prior to transplanting I removed the crate materials and heavily scored the very "bound" roots. The receiving hole was very generous; about 4 x the size of the root mass. I filled it with a good mix of native screened soil, screened compost from Hiawatha garden supply, home "worm compost" and mushroom waste compost. The roots were watered in well and the tree was seated on a raised "mound" so as to better accommodate the weeping lower branches. A rooting stimulator from Gertens was also applied after transplant. This tree has thrived in this location for 3 years. It candles nicely in spring and has every other year bumper cone crops. We have watered it regularly through summer drought and sent it into winter always well watered. We feel we have done everything we can to help this tree.  However, in this late winter / early spring we are noticing the scattered "rust" that you see in the pictures. I know it is normal to see some of that as spruce trees shed old needles but this seems different. We have 6 other weeping white spruce on the property and this is the only one on which we see this to this extent. It is however, also the only one in the most shaded corner of the yard. Additionally, it is also the one tree that I could not keep much snow around during the more barren and extremely cold parts of this most recent winter.  The other trees were well insulated with snow all winter. Perhaps it has some root stress from the freezing? To me it looks a lot like what I see on jackpines up north. In that case, the "rust" seems apparent in spring but needles then drop and new growth makes the tree look good as new by midsummer. The Gertens "tree guy" did not think this was "needle cast", which sounds horrible and aggressive. The "rust" does not seem to be towards the bottom of the tree at all and it is not in the interior either. It seems to be scattered pretty uniformly amongst the outer branches and in all 4 exposures. He said that  "cast" is fungal and can spread to other trees. If that's the case we would want to do what we can to contain and treat this.  He also said it is still "early" in the approaching spring and there is time to diagnose and set a plan of action. Writing to you is my first step towards that. Can you hazard a guess based on the pictures? We live in Minneapolis along the west side of the Mississippi River.