I just wanted to post that I was out at the National Arboretum a few weeks ago. The large Q. acutas looked like they sustained some damage from teh past winter. Some twig and a few branches died back. Sad to see. But they will certainly survive. The Q. salicina looked like it had NO damage at all surprisingly. I have never seen acorns on them. Interestingly the Q. phillyreoides had some acorns. No apparent dieback. They all looked rather shrubby to me and not large single trunked trees. L. henyri and Q. myrsinifolias looked just fine. Q. glauca specimens at the Arboretum have all had a rough go of it over the years. Numerous diebacks. Pretty pathetic. They should really not be grown up here. But maybe they got some northern provenance stock that they wanted to try. I didn't see where they were from. Unrelated, but all the hollies looked great. Even Ilex latifolia. The Ilex latifolia in my yard looks great as well. No apparent winter damage. A small amount of leaf spot but overall I was very pleased. This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 10:33

Here is one I didn't know about. Looks like they LOVE the high summer rainfall, and deep sandy soils of southeastern Virginia! The best Cryptomeria I've ever seen on the east coast (probably, anywhere! I've never been to JP or CN) was somewhere in Norfolk but I doubt I could ever find it again. http://bigtree.cnre.vt.edu/detail.cfm?AutofieldforPrimaryKey=660 Time for those folks to install a lightning arrester for that tree! Or make sure the church spire is well grounded so that it diverts the charge LOL.

I just read through this long topic and in a couple of places Norway spruce was mentioned. A study was done at SUNY Syracuse a few years ago to determine the growth curves for Norway spruce in unthinned stands in New York State. They analyzed a large number of stands on a variety of soils (somewhere between 50 and 100 if I remember right). They "destructively sampled" a large number of the tallest trees and plotted their growth, taking into account the number of times the trees had been weeviled and/or had other kinds of injuries. Anyway, to reduce a long and thorough study to the bare essentials, on the best sites trees that were 4.5 feet tall at a starting point were about 115 feet tall after 50 more years. The starting point of 4.5 feet was selected because the time it takes to get to that height was affected by many unpredictable factors such as weed competition, etc. that it couldn't reasonably be factored in. I have done my own measurements on a small number of stands in MD and WV and have found some that exceed those in NY by a small margin, the best being a little over 120 feet in 50 years after the 4.5 foot height was achieved. It is my general impression that if the best strains were grown on the best soils, the growth would be somewhat better than 120 feet. Almost all the spruce stands I have found have been growing on class three forest soils, whereas class 2 soils are fairly common in this region. To explain just a bit, on a class 3 forest soil red oak will grow to 65 or 75 feet in fifty years, on a class two soil, 75 to 85 feet. So the importance of soil quality is rather great in determining the potential growth of trees. Class 1 soils are fairly rare in this region and tend to be bottomland soils suited to a limited number of species. The one thing that really struck me about these growth curves determined by the folks at SUNY Syracuse is that unlike the growth curves of virtually all other species that I have seen growing in the Eastern U.S., these growth curves were not really "curves" at all, but rather straight lines that as they left the graph at the 50 year mark were showing an undiminished rate of growth. Other growth curves show a "curve" that shows decelerating growth at that point. But, based on my own observations, the growth rate of Norway spruce does start to diminish fairly soon after the 50 year mark. I haven't seen the growth curves for redwoods and other western species, but I would assume that they use a 100 year time frame and must be something really impressive. My guess is that the best Norway spruce growing on the best soils in forest stands in the Allegheny region would eventually get somewhere close to 200 feet, about the same as in the best stands in Europe. The oldest spruce I have seen here are somewhere near 150 feet now and are growing, in one case, 6 to 10 inches per year at 100 years old (Rothkugel), and in another 12 to 20 inches per year at 73 years old (Glady), but both of these are on class 3 soils. --Spruce

There once was a local Hosta Society in Spokane, right? At least someone said so and I attended the National Convention there about 10 years ago! Some great Hosta gardens thereabouts and in ID. Maybe it's time to grease the wheels and get them turning again! Alexis, you might inquire around the local nurseries, to see if you can find a few interested people, to restart the organization. I can't imagine a Hostaholic taking the cure and hasn't fallen off the wagon! I have, several times during the past 20 years! Rb