no scale... in adrian MI ... the annual i call the bachelor buttons... or corn flowers .. and they are just over an inch wide .. wiki says: Centaurea cyanus the perennial .. lol.. i call a perennial bachelor button ... but it is at least 2 inches wide ... i am sure the latin will come to me in a day or two ... if you buy the blue seed... which i did a decade ago [when i moved to this house] ... it reseeds tamely.. and the finches are entertaining.. watching them trying to land on them ... but over time.. the seed will denigrate.. so that though most are still blue.. you will have some white and purple ones ... an annual i have not been without.. for 35 years .. in the garden ... ken ps: i googled: perennial bachelor button.. i see it was consistent with their suggestion.. but i must have had it under some old name .. Here is a link that might be useful: link

Thank you very much for the ID's. The first one is near the spot where I saw the bad-looking P. mugo subsp. rotunda about which I asked an ID too. At first I though they were both the same species because they looked similar, but when I went too look closer then I could see the cones were definitely different. Funny part is that someone else suggested in that thread where I asked for an ID that it could be P. thunbergii. So I guess both trees are similar looking indeed. The second one I think comes from a hedge close-by that was (I think) never trimmed and therefore started producing cones. The third one is almost a miracle to me. Closest Abies koreana that I'm aware of is at least a few hundred meters away from where I found it. I'm very glad I dug it out too because A. koreana was also on my wanted list. :)

I think E. corollata is probably it, there is a lot of this plant growing in this area and I have photographed it often but in apparent later stages of growth; I think the unusual appearance of the flower and the overall shape of the plant is what threw me off but looking at some of my other E. corollata photos at the base of the plant, the leaf shape and habit seem to match this. I may try to confirm this later this spring and see if I can find some more plants in the same stage of growth. Thanks all.

Thank you soooo much, gardengal! I just called Charlotte and she wants me to print out all pertinent info for her,...which, of course, I will gladly do. You just made her very happy. Uber good on ya! :)