Re: How to post photos. Posting Photos to Garden Web Does this help? If not I wrote my own, how to: Join photobucket.com (it's free) - create a folder - select upload photos (several "formats" such as multiple or new uploader or old uploader, etc-) - transfer your photos from the name of the folder you created in your "My Documents" - "My Pictures" - and then select, upload. . .Now your photos are on photobucket. Left & Right click your mouse on the third string of characters, "line" underneath each photograph, select "copy" and then > add that string of characters here in the Message Box (that we all type in). And wham, you click on the blue box called, "Preview Message" - and you'll see your photo - along with any text you may have typed. Dax

Just so there is no confusion, Tom, I have no interest in wood "production" in my conifer groves either. They are purely for my own personal enjoyment. All of my advice is based on what I imagine is the potential for a forest that will be beautiful to walk through/sit under, etc. And, I guess, I am a bit conservative. If I haven't seen a forest of a specific species planted in our general area and seen the results, and/or at least know how fast a tree will grow, I won't recommend it. There is a tremendous investment involved, not only in planting and tending to the trees to get them going, but also the land. And perhaps most important, the time. Maybe you are something like 35 years old--you plant something, wait 30 years, and then find out it is nothing like what you hoped for. Well, that's it, you don't get a second chance. I will guarantee you can have a beautiful cathedral-like forest well on its way in 35 years with Norway Spruce, White pine, and to a bit lesser degree, red pine. European, Japanese, and Marschlinsii (hybrid) larch will certainly grow fast enough. Just what a forest will look like--its actual beauties--I am not sure about. But I would commit to some decent larch plantings also. Beyond that, I would be cautious--I just don't know of anything. But there may be other things. Your idea of ponderosa pine may be promising. Any other firs than the Colorado? Would Nordmann do OK there? It may be faster. Maybe Resin can suggest something. And, one of the most beautiful trees in the whole wide world is Oriental spruce--Picea orientalis. Probably 90% of the people that see Oriental spruce and Norway spruce together, would prefer the Oriental spruce for its denser and more fine textured foliage. Some trees have a wonderful weep also. It is a terrible slow starter compared to NS, but after that is grows well. Slower than NS almost always, but probably faster than the Colorado fir. Another spruce that is nice--I don't want to praise this one too much--is white spruce. A bit slow, but I have some groves of this also and they are nice. But I guess that when I can plant Norway spruce, I would skip this one, unless I was going for variety. Of course You have the Thuja, which you love, and which I love also. If I were younger I might plant a forest of Green Giants. I know you want to have some things that are different from what you usually see, so that is a motivation you have that for me has been only a small one. I want the forest "cathedral," and for that, NS and white pine are the "horses." Well, to sum up, in your place I would experiment and plant lots of things. But if I primarily wanted a forest cathedral kind of environment, I would plant much larger plots of NS and white pine, then smaller quarter acre plots of other interesting possibilities. Or maybe just groups of "specimen" trees." --Spruce

The soil being wet in winter usually isn't the problem hairmetal. At least usually not with plants bigger than forbs or geophytes; and of course discounting some nervous nellies like Daphne odora which can die at any time of year if someone so much as sneezes on one. (ok...a bit of hyperbole) Wet...but not saturated. Of course, only an aquatic conifer like Taxodium is going to grow in a swamp that is constantly wet. The problem with most plants from mountain climates is hot wet soil in summer. For example in the PNW I saw rhododendrons planted in low spots...not quite the bottom of a swale but close...where they would surely die if planted in a similar situation on the east coast. In the PNW they don't have to worry about 4" of rain from one July storm and soil temps. going well above 80F. A. pindrow is definitely zn 7 hardy, there's one at the Arnold Arboretum though I don't know how old it is. (http://arboretum.harvard.edu/explorer/) There was one at least 12' tall at the old Dilworth Nursery in Oxford, PA. Though Oxford isn't very far from me as the crow flies, it's MUCH colder, having freezes much earlier in the fall and having been below 0F at least a few times in the past decade. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that plant was probably destroyed when the nursery was sold. (Google already has recent satellite images: you can see the pockmarked fields here: http://goo.gl/maps/abdXO) They had a 2-3 acre field of stock plants, when I drove by there a few months ago it was a plowed field. Heart breaking. I hope they found someone to broker the sale of those but I guess it's so expensive to move them at that size, maybe not. Here is a link that might be useful: http://arboretum.harvard.edu/explorer/ This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Sep 13, 13 at 2:23

We deviate of the mean subject, the 'Igel'. The quiestion was if this is a concolor or grandis cultivar. I also think it's a grandis cause of the smell of the crushted needles and the dark green needle colour. If it is a concolor cultivar we must not forget that this plant is a cultivar of the Abies concolor var. lowiana which is differend from the "normal" Abies concolor. The World Checklist mentioned that this 'Igel' is a dwarf seedling of the var. lowiana. Krüssmann mentioned that the var. lowiana has small buds and the needle colour is dull green, instead of this 'Igel' which needle colour is a shiny dark green. The problem here is that we can't asked the founder of this plant (Günther Horstmann) because he no longer among us and his son (Uwe Horstmann) doesn't have the knowledge.