Late last year a conifer enthusiast has planted Wollemia nobilis near Slupsk, Poland (close to the Baltic Sea, but z7a at best). It has already withstood -7C without protection (now covered).

You can see it for yourself (using the link).

Here is a link that might be useful: Wollemi Pine growing in Poland (with photos)

There are several wollemi pines in downtown Washington, DC (warm zone 7) that were planted approximately 3 years ago. They have done well and survived two or three winters without protection so far, but recent winters have not been particularly cold here so they haven't really been put to the test yet.

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Washington DC has heat-island effect. So the city is up to zone 9. For example, the secret services have hundreds of floors below ground. They all use heating in winter.

I highly doubt that ground heat of any amount from underground facilities would raise the air temperature the 20 degrees that would be implied by two zones. Maybe half a zone. Although the UFO's and secret nuclear programs might make it zone 9.

I went on a 3 week trip this winter before Christmas. I actually live in a travel trailer at the moment. While away, power went out, and the indoor/outdoor temp went to -25C. This lasted 'about' 2 weeks.
My other house plants died. However an Opuntia phaeacantha (Z4) is of course fine, and the Wollemia survived as well. There are several brown tips (segments?). But they are sporadic.
Do I plan to plant it out come spring? NO!!! It will be kept in for life.

Wow! -25C is impressive. I can only hope that these trees turn out like the Dawn Redwoods and are a whole lot hardier than initially expected. People thought it was a zone 7 plant many moons ago. I elect to do like everyone else, and wait until a sufficient number of people have killed theirs before buying one and planting it outside.

The National Arboretum had a big freezing out of the long-established camellia collection some years ago. Speaking of camellias, these may look alive until flowering time and then drop all their parts to reveal that they are actually dead.

Roots are much less hardy than tops. In the north, a problem with southern hemisphere/warm climate plants that may otherwise be hardy to brief periods of rather low temperatures is the freezing of the roots that occurs when cold persists long enough to penetrate the soil.

Palms that may take 17F for a night or two in California may be getting 70F a few days later. This does not demonstrate hardiness to 17F under northern conditions, where such cold may occur repeatedly during an Arctic front that lasts for a week or weeks and freezes the roots.

Interestingly, a recent version of the USDA zone map I saw had the DC metro area as a zone 8. I am not sure about the zone 9 thing, b/c even with all the urban heat island effects DC seems to get a couple nights a year in the mid to upper teens. I am really wanting to try a Wollemia pine, but my worry would be too much summer heat here. Those specimens in DC look great, almost fake.

If anyone has cuttings or will be taking cuttings, I would trade ginkgo seeds or trachycarpus takil seeds. I would also be willing to buy them for a small price.
-Werner J Stiegler

Interesting it looks like its going to be a Z7 tree
Resin do you know how the Kew one is doing???

Temps tonight in the Balto area in the single digits which is bitter cold for us. Definitely in the teens in DC. This will be a good test for cold-hardiness for the trees in Jonnieb's pics. According to Wiki, phytophthora cinnamomi is also a problem. This soil fungus is often found whereever azaleas/rhododendrons were planted.
Has anyone ever seen a large tree, do they age gracefully or become ratty?
Sam

Photos taken in the wild show trees reminding me of Cunninghamia, many of them clumps of multiple stems.

I live about an hour or two away from D.C. I thought it was z7 like I was. D.C. just experienced that really cold spell where it got into the single digits! It was very cold. Hope that pine is doing all right.

Baltimore dipped below zero last week. The watermeters all burst, and water poured out into the street creating little frozen rivers. It was quite a sight, but it left us without water for over a day. I don't think they fixed them, but the rest of the pipe must have thawed for us to get some water cause last I checked, the rivers in the street were still flowing. The city is not too on top of things. D.C. being so close, I imagine it could not have been much warmer. Anyone have pictures of the wollemias in D.C. after the cold spell?
-Werner J Stiegler
www.binghamtonmemorialtree.webs.com

Note that temperature ranges given for each USDA hardiness zone are averages. It sometimes gets below 10 degrees F. in USDA 8, below 0 degrees F. in USDA 7 and so on. And there will be winters when it does not get down into the average annual minimum temperature range. The numbers of winters above 20 degrees F. around here result in USDA 9 plants like Cordyline australis overwintering for stretches of multiple years (only to freeze down to the roots when it does get below 15 or 20 degrees F.).

Can Wollemia handle the heat and humidity of zone 8 or 9 on the Gulf coast?

So far - yes. The National Geographic plants were grown near Tampa, FL. I have several nice ones here in North Florida. They do need water during drought and might get root-rot on clay soils further north in the SE...I am on deep sand, with acidic conditions.

I did see a little damage to the needles after 18 F here. I am very doubtful about claims of zone 7 hardiness. Certainly it won't be viable there in the long-term. Zone 8 is even pushing it, especially in cooler zone 8 areas with shorter growing seasons and cooler summers.

Don't know what the case is in this instance but what happens is that commercial sources and others rate plants as hardy to a zone based on the average annual minimum temperatures assigned to that zone, rather than the absolute minimum temperatures. So, a plant that kills back between 0 and 10 degrees F. becomes described as "hardy to Zone 7". Since in reality Zone 7 sometimes gets colder than 0 degrees F., a plant not hardy below 0 to 10 degrees F. will last only as long as it takes for the next cold winter to show up.

Thank you Salicaceae.

I should have asked this earlier:

Have they come down in price? I have room for five or six. Can't pay big bucks for each seedling.

What's your guess as to wind resistence/toughness? I think we're both in hurricane country.

Impossible to say. In the wild, the species probably doesn't experience any wind at all in its deep gorge habitat. Then again, no frost there either.

Resin

No, larger ones are 100 dollars and smaller size 70. I think they can be purchased at Plant Delights for about 80 each.