If this is one of the trees from Sorghum, I brought in a handful of trees on that same truck and mine are performing great. I in fact brought in a Picea abies 'Aurea' on that same truck which would be much more prone to burn than your native and it seems to be doing fine. So I would possibly lean away from burn. Not saying it's not, just saying I'd lean another way. The key thing you said that worries me is your watering. I planted the trees the day they came off the truck which was back the first of November. I watered them well that day, once 30 days later, and once this week before the hard freeze came in. I did limited watering each time and other than that I've left them alone. It is very hard to resist watering. As I've said before, I have killed more trees watering them out of concern, than the heat has claimed. And now that the temp has turned cold, water will last a long time in our clay soil. Another possible explanation is how the rootball was dug. You may be experiencing loppsided impact depending on what support roots were cut during the dig. I've had a few times that some branches or areas would die back mysteriously when others didn't. Later they grew out of it so this was the best explanation I could see. mark

What you are seeing on the outside is the results of the most recently used pot being too small - trees in the ground may often have a bigger root system than top. Think about that and then look at the size of the top of the tree you bought and then look at the size of the pot. Ironically, stock offered to retail shoppers in more adequately sized pots may be rejected as having too small of a top. In my experience the spoiling problem with grafted conifers is already corkscrew/kinked/j-rooted root-stocks being used at time of grafting, so that the finished specimen purchased by the end consumer has deformities at the base of it going back years. To check your spruce for this you will have to get into the center of the root mass, below the main trunk. If you find a turnip of tight main roots below the trunk - as is very often the case - then you will be left with either planting the specimen with these in place - or not planting the specimen. There is usually little scope for pulling these open or making any cuts that will not take whole sections of smaller roots along with them.

Stephen, the 'Slon W.B.' was found by our friend Balatka. 3 years ago, after our visit, I also received some scionswood from the original broom and some were successfull propagated. Clément, can you give us some background info about the 'Boeger's Saule', I never came across this one. The 'Zwergnase' is a witches'broom of the Picea abies 'Parsonsii' not 'Parsonii'. I think you received this one from Jörg Kohout who also spelled this name in the wrong way...

Ken, using your technique for tracing back the annual growth, these would appear to be younger than 14 years, maybe 7-10 tops. Is there a story behind this? Also, why still staked at this age? Thanks.