Very nice ponderosa finds Nate. Both are worth to be propagated! I like the curved needles very much, which remind me to the 'Sugarite', another find by you with the same characteristics...

HEy Mike, Actually, I did have some plumeria when I first met you but not many....JUST RECENTLY HAVE I BECOME OBSESSED LMAO!!! I'm telling ya the egg method is awesome!!! IT really thickens those fragile roots up quickly. If you can Mike...just try it with one and plant it in a clear plastic pot. I swear, in 6 months(maybe even shorter if the plumeria is out in full sun and temps over 80),you will see for yourself. You will even see how the roots seek out that egg, and the roots end up doubling in girth!! I will NOT repot unless I have the eggs! IT's not worth it to me, and I have found that I end up with much better blooms. Also, I FINALLY got a fig tree collection going!! I have 7 diffrent varieties now and I will have one more to add here very soon. I tried my first ripe fig and it was DELICIOUS!! To me the flavor is very tropical and yummy! Man, I am not going to convince you on growing mango am I!! I'm telling ya...my citrus take more light and in general there 100% less finicky!! I will have to email some pics of mine. I also cannot get my D.R. to bloom but there seedlings. Your actually warmer and you have a longer growing season than I do. The mango will bloom in the early spring and will ripen before you have to bring them indoors. I hate to see you rob yourself of such an awesome experience just because you don't think you have enough light! Cmon Mike were's your sense of adventure?! Take care, Andrew

This topic is of interest as I'm trying both a P. ponderosa & jeffreyi. Both are doing reasonable well -- Jeffrey pine (from Forestfarm) put up a thumb-thick 19" candle last season & now alittle over 5' tall after 4 yrs in the ground -- it's quite handsome. The Ponderosa pine (Musserforests) is a 2-needler, so it's definitely var. scopulorum from the N. Rockies. I don't expect these to do well here, tho, 'cause of eventual needlecast. The needlecast is worse in the warmer parts of the E US. Spruceman's "good" specimen is prb'ly due to it's relative high-altitude/cooler location. The only decent grouping of 30'+ specimens I've seen w/o needlecast were near the summit of the Blue Ridge mnts in S Pennsylvania along Rt 30. IIRC, the Va State Arb had a miserable-looking Ponderosa about 60 ft tall w/only a few high branches left alive. BTW Spruceman, my 11' tall Dunkeld (hybrid) larch planted in spring 2004 has a few ruby-red female cones just poking out now on the lower, more "mature" branches.

Maybe I'm just blanking them out because I have seen so many of them all over the West but I don't remember a lot of ponderosa pines in the Bay Area, are you sure these aren't something else like Canary Island pine, Torrey pine or one of the other pines that have been much planted in coastal California communities? If you want a long-needled pine the endangered yet visually appealing Torrey pine is probably what you should plant anyway. See it at the San Francisco Botanic Garden and similar places. In cultivation it has grown much larger than in the wild. In case it pertains some kind of aggressive needle cast has been sweeping through long-planted and often rather sizable ponderosa and Coulter pines on properties up here, spoiling their appearance. So far I have not seen it on Jeffrey pine, perhaps this is resistant. This latter species is more handsome than ponderosa pine anyway; I see some structural features in your second photo that make me suspect the trees behind the lodge are actually examples of this species also. I know of only one Torrey pine around here so there isn't much basis for seeing if it could pick up the needle problem also (so far it looks good, as far as I have seen from a little distance anyway).