That's interesting Fotis. Certaintly, my climate is probably somewhat cooler on average than yours in winter: http://www.sercc.com/cgi-bin/sercc/cliMAIN.pl?de6410 and definitely moister year round, but maybe only slightly more so in winter. Or maybe not at all: there are places in Greece that are quite moist and similar in some respects to some interior valleys of coastal Northern California, albeit markedly moister and more humid in summer. Are you similar to this place? (sorry about our antiquated temp. scale and the need for conversion!) That's kind of like Ukiah, CA with slightly cooler winters and somewhat wetter summers. Still, redwoods should grow very well indeed there, and not show this type of damage seen on yours. Anyhow, we've been having mild winters but they still had some cold, windy periods. I've never seen such damage even on a smaller plant, in fact in 3 years outside I've never seen my 2 clones of redwood bothered at all. Summer or winter. They have also seen from about -12C to 37C. Maybe my loamy soils are more moisture retentive than yours? So it makes me think that the problem you are having is more with dryness than absolute cold. Maybe your soil is rocky and a fair amt. of the winter rains run off or quickly percolates through. Or even this: maybe because you are a winter wet climate, the plant really does want to start growing in winter. But then, it experiences cold spells and is damaged. Since we have year round rainfall and slightly cooler winters, they only try to grow in summer here? Just food for thought!

In a week's time, I'm counting fewer Juncos after their Red Baron aerial pursuits last weekend, am seeing a tad more dead grass as the snow retreats, and Mrs. Cardinal has gone from flakes on 3-21-2015 to chatting with a young female Finch under sunny skies on 3-23-2015. Found a Titmouse looking depressed in a cold rain on 3-26-2015. So we're progressing. I'm still wondering if there is a male Purple Finch here - could this be him? because she's still here. She has the white lines over her eyes. The possum is still eating cat food everyday as Ivy was elevated to higher protein whole foods. This is funny - last week I cored a Bosc pear with a melon baller and gave the core bits to the possom on the side of his cat food. Next morning, food all gone, plate licked cleaned. A few days later, I had some leftover celery chunks, so I put 3 small pieces on the side of the dish with his cat food. Next morning the dish was whistle clean and the 3 celery chunks were stacked up in the dish untouched. Possom prefers sweet apparently. Jane

I planted my biggest SCO about a decade ago, and it's now about 25' tall. Back in the spring I was walking underneath it, and I looked down and saw three seedlings, so apparently it produced at least a few acorns at only ten years old. I potted those seedlings up, so I'll be planting those in another few weeks.

Following up on this, after several months. Opinions varied on whether they needed water or should be left alone. I opted for watering. A lot -- both the sprays and additional heavy water by hand and some deep soaker hose time. They started to improve and show some new growth maybe two months later. I'd say by now that are 75% back. The lesson here is that arbutus trees are not THAT low water or drought tolerant. If I had opted to keep the very low water, I'd be out $30,000 of trees.