I would be delighted to give it a good home. I am regenerating my block near BinnaBurra. Where are you located? I could perhaps pick it up directly from you. Tony

Hello again Rodaf, I've done a little research and come up with the following list. A couple reinforce my previous thoughts. I think you may already have considered and discounted some of the others, and some may be long shots. But if I was in your position, I would try them all and see how I went. Cheers, Frank Angophora floribunda Geijera parviflora Brachychiton populneus ssp. Populneus Brachychiton rupestris Brachychiton australis Petalostigma triloculare Flindersia maculosa Flindersia australis Atalaya hemiglauca Pittosporum phylliraeoides Pittosporum rhombifolium Santalum lanceolatum Ficus platypoda var. platypoda Erythrina vespertilio Agathis robusta Grevillea robusta Euroschinus falcata var. falcata Callitris glaucophylla syn. C. columellaris var. campestris Araucaria cunninghamii Syzygium corynanthum

Take a small knife and scrape a tiny ( 1/4 inch or so) bit of bark away from the bottom of the brown area. If it's creamy white or soft green and moist under the bark, that part is still alive. If it's dry and tan or brown, then that area is dead. Do that every foot or so up the top of the tree. At some point if you find dry/tan/brown under the bark and it continues up from there, you can assume that portion of the tree is dead and can cut it off there. Also, alive branches and trunks will feel cool when you hold them, dead area feel warm or the same temp as the air when held. The parts that are still creamy white/soft green and moist under the bark will probably re-sprout again in the future. But it may not sprout until spring. Those brown leaves will not turn green again, but if it's on a live branch (as tested above) when the branch leafs out again in spring, the brown leaves will probably be pushed off by the new growth and fall. Podocarpus are pretty tough trees and in about 2-3 years it will look great again, just don't forget to water during heat waves. Even if it's on an automatic irrigation system, if the temps go over 90*F, it's a good idea to supplement with a hose, as you've found out the hard way. Podocarpus may prefer acid soil, but they are very adaptable and tolerate our neutral to slightly alkaline soils and water just fine. It's really almost impossible to change the pH of a native sol anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that. Don't use peat moss, it is expensive and dries out too easily. Better to use a nice 3-5" thick mulch of composted shredded fir bark instead. It will help keep the soil cooler in summer and reduce evaporation. If you have "Mow N Blow" gardeners who use a blower, try Shredded Bark, also called Gorilla Hair. It resists being blown away by the gardeners better than many other mulches. I'd also give it a good all-purpose fertilizer in spring, around March/April to help it grow again. Always water before and right after fertilizing, never feed a dry plant. Good luck, I think it will be fine. This post was edited by BarbJP on Tue, Dec 30, 14 at 18:21

Yes even here it's still an evolving situation. For example, I would now rank the damage on Ilex 'Scepter' as being more severe than that on 'Sand Pond'. Once again proving how a 100% American X American hybrid is more resistant to our capricious weather than an Asian X European one...as you'd expect. Because the leaves of 'Sand Pond' are obviously reviving themselves, but those of 'Scepter' continue to dessicate and turn papery brown. I wish I had a male I. integra, it would be cool to make a 'Sand Pond' X integra cross. (I should clarify versus what I said on Feb 23rd: some 'Scepter' leaves were still undamaged at that point. All 'Sand Pond' leaves had minor damage. Now, ALL 'Scepter' leaves are basically dead and some are already falling off. Most 'Sand Pond' leaves still have damage but the green bits are getting greener, it seems. The March 5 freeze was by far the most damaging of the winter) There's some rather odd damage now becoming apparent even on Abies ernestii...sometimes rated as hardy as 5b and I've seen a huge, beautiful one near Rochester, NY. (part of the reason I bought one) The leaves have little yellowish spots...I might post to the conifer forum to see if someone has seen anything like it. They are so subtle they might be impossible to photograph. It's like a very subtle variegation. Certainly not serious, but fascinating. All in all as they say, it still could have been worse. It also makes me feel good about my choice years ago not to invest in trying a big, expensive Trachycarpus palm. Because I thought north of about St. Michael's, MD or maybe Cape May, NJ - and even those locations are really really pushing it- they have no chance of being truly long term plants w/o protection. I knew another winter like 1994 would happen, and it did. What I did not know is we would have 2 in a row! I reiterate that 'Soquel' is my best looking Sequoia...granted it is my oldest but the bigger 'Swarthmore Hardy'/'Chapel Hill' has been in the ground a while, too, and arguably in a better spot. (better soil) Not that it is an appropriate rating, but I'm reminded of Dr. Dirr's former SEO website that rated 'Soquel' as zn 6 hardy. Not true but he apparently had some information about it surviving cold temperatures well, which it does. If you need to try one in the DC area, I'd now recommend that over any of the others. I want to try to see the huge tree in Silver Spring MD this spring, to see how it weathered things, and the 2 that are almost as big in NoVA. BTW - given that exposed Leylands were damaged even last winter in the outer suburbs of Baltimore, I definitely think most of New England would be stretching it for them.