cherry blossom is incredibly short lived in my z5 ... a couple days at best ... it was near done blooming when you bought it.. and the transplant finished it off for this season ... in my z5 the flower buds are incredibly sensitive to frost/freeze after winter.. and prior to bloom ... your annual show will vary based on such ... all you should be worried about .... is getting it to live thru summer.. and you should be all set .... where is two face.. TO THE BATCAVE.. lol .. ken

hi tom ... welcome to GW ... if no tree farm grows it in your area... and nurseries refuse to stock it... that should surely tell you all you need to know about it in your area ... but that said.. you should ask a high end nursery to order one in for you from the left coast ..... with the understanding that you assume all risk.. and will waive any warranty from them ... in other words.. ask them to take your money with no risk on their part ... i would suggest.. you go no bigger than a 6 foot transplant ... younger .. smaller plants.. take shipping.. transplant.. and re-establishment easier.. than extremely large trees... and a 12 footer is such.. in my world .... unless money is no object.. and you simply dont care if it dies ... i have a list of about 100 trees/conifers I WANT!!! .. i dream of.. but they dont grow here.. some i have tried and killed... but the bottom line ...but for a very minor few is.. if they tell you it wont grow there.. BELIEVE THEM .... and set aside your dream plant.. and find something close enough.. that does grow there.. and go with that... good luck ken

Yeah, you'll be lucky to find that one in the trade. Nurseries that cater to reforestation efforts might be a good bet. And now, a word or two about Betula papyrifera, aka white birch, paper birch, canoe birch: This tree, native to NE USA and adjacent Canada, all the way up to the Arctic Circle, is much maligned, partly due to confusion between it and the non-native white-barked Betula pendula or European white birch. The latter is a bronze birch borer magnet, and since back some decades, it seemed a non-native plant was always held to be superior to our own native flora, many of these things got planted all over the place. They are not a suitable tree for N. America, due to this same BBB, a native pest of some birch species. BBB can afflict our native B. papyrifera, but if the tree is well sited, ie. head in the sun, roots cool and moist, it actually has very good resistance to BBB. You won't often hear that, even from well educated tree people, but t'is true. Because it has evolved along with the insect, it has reasonably good natural defenses to same. Now take that same tree out of it's cool, moist environment, plop it down in some stripped-out suburban yard, forget about water, and look, the tree is "sick", meaning of course, BBB got to it, as it does tend to attack stressed trees. There is a concurrent insect problem of birch as well, the birch leaf miner. Larvae of that insect tunnel around within the leaf, causing stress to the tree. But alone, leaf miner is not likely to kill a birch tree. It's just another factor thrown in the mix. Location, location, location! +oM

ken is wrong in his advice about no pruning when the tree is very young. That can be the best time to remove very small errant branches. Yes, all leaves work to create photosynthates that support the plant's growth but as tom said....that small branch is not going to make one bit of difference. Try to clip that branch to an outward growing stem so that you don't leave any stubs. In the winter, when all the leaves are gone, take a look at the tree's infrastructure, the skeleton, so to speak, to check for other very obvious problems. It will not hurt or set back the development of the plant to do some very minor detail pruning.