Watauga County said that trees are bareroot, 18" to 36" inches and have to be picked up in April. I won't be in NC all summer. Could I plant them in the ground in NC and heavily mulch? Or should I pot them and grow in Florida until ready to plant? Asheville is lower and warmer than Boone which is zone 6. I'll be in Asheville in March and will visit the NC Arboretum. You guys are great-keep your ideas coming!

I can't say for sure whether it is a graft. (I'm more of a flower and vegetable gardener and don't know very much about trees.) The catalog simply said it was a 4' tree. It was sent in its dormant stage, with just two bare branches. The very top of the main branch looks like it was pruned before they sent it, because it has a straight cut. The wood showing doesn't look to be alive at all. I guess maybe I should see how it does next summer and wait to prune it.

Yep, I do know about willows and water lines, but thanks for the reminder. and I totally agree that sycamores are messy beasts. I would never want one in my yard for that very reason, but I do like to admire the big ones that other people have . . . as long as I don't need to clean up after them. I imagine that all of you are aware of the cottonwood's history as far as the pioneers and the hardy folks of the old west were concerned? If they could see a cottonwood in the distance, they knew that they'd find water nearby. I just like to hear the rattle of the leaves and see the flash of silver in the wind. I grew up with one of them, a big old thing that we used to climb, and my sister and I thought it was so neat to take bags and fill them up with the 'cotton'. We thought we'd make pillows from it. Isn't it funny the place that trees have in our lives? I imagine all of us could name a favorite tree that we remember from childhood. We also had a big chinaberry tree, which was not in the least invasive where it was, but it would be in OK. Of course, I also grew up with a view of miles and miles of orange groves when I looked out the bedroom window. It breaks my heart to think they are all gone now, ripped out to make way for more and more subdivisions. I didn't know that the big sumac likes to be a clump, but that's fine with me. We have a blank 3-acre field to put it in, and it could use a showpiece like that. I did know that the smaller ones like to clump. Does anyone know what the growth rate is on them? I'll definitely look up the lacebark elm. I like elms, but am always watching for susceptibility to disease. Coming from the NorCal as I did, I've seen some of the most magnificent old oaks, but the CA Live Oak in particular. I have photos of giant boulders with these old trees growing up through cracks in the rock. I do have a sad story to tell about them, though, and it's a good example of what happens when people go fooling around with a natural habitat. Those big oaks do not like to be watered. They've lived for 100 years or more, perfectly happy with what the natural climate gives them. Then people come along and begin tweaking it around, as happened on the campus of the Santa Rosa Jr College. The trees there would take your breath away. They were so carefully pruned and tended by the best in the business. But . . . they overlooked the fact that a lot of topsoil had been brought in years before and then a lovely lawn planted on it and watered to keep it green. It took years for the trees to begin to die, but die they did. One huge one keeled over in the middle of a picnic on the lawn and made headline news. The professionals were called in to find the problem and see it if could be corrected. They had to dig out trenches about 24" deep and several feet wide to clear out the topsoil that had been jammed around the base of each tree, and put in grates to allow the trunks to breathe as they should. The old trees were very forgiving of the abuse that they'd gotten with all that water, but finally it was just too much for them. I don't know how many of them were lost before the corrections were made or if it solved the problem in the long run. I haven't been back past the college in years. It's just a word to the wise. Sometimes it's not good to mess with Mother Nature. Pat

Bob, I'm in agreement with Dave. Scarlet Sentinel is one of the slower growing red (or Freeman) maple varieties (supposedly it is a Freeman Maple with a little less Silver Maple than other Freeman varieties). If you look at a lot of the pictures online they seem to confirm this- big trunks with pretty small canopies. Here is a link from Moon Nurseries (prominent wholesaler in the southern U.S.) describing it as one of the slower growing maples: http://www.moonnurseries.com/Trees?nid=2146 And, same as Arbordave stated, fall color is also quite minimal here in Iowa (almost non-existent). Given the fact that eventually it will get out to 20' wide or so why not use something that gives you a nicer aesthetic or faster growth rate? I wondered if you had ever considered Metasequoia 'Gold Rush' (or straight species) or Taxodium 'Shawnee Brave'. They would give you branching nearly to the ground, a fairly narrow habit, good growth rate, and the beautiful, feathery foliage all season turning coppery-bronze in the fall. Beaver Creek Wholesale has both in medium to very large sizes. They would also have many of the columnar oaks in anywhere from an 8-10' to 18' size, depending on your budget. Great people that could give you a local supplier who could get the trees in for you. I was looking at their maples earlier but it looks like they are down to Acer rubrum 'Autumn Spire' for more upright, thinner cultivars. Let us know when you do get them in the ground and what you end up going with!