Thanks for taking the time to post the pics. FWIW

I am working with a Note II now. A galaxy s4 or 5 would be upgrades for me.

That Abies alba surprises me that it looks so good!

That Ilex purpurea is nice! I've only ever seen it rated to z8, though.

Yes, it is rather anomalous for Abies alba to be happy in climates that are at all challenging - I wonder about the identification of that example.

Taiwania grows over 200' tall so I am not sure how that one constitutes a big example. Another one, in San Marino was 59' high by 1993. (And the Seattle arboretum had one 41+' high about 10 years ago). Watered lawns in southern California may have the biggest ones in the country, which perhaps tells us what kind of conditions the tree likes.

"Taiwania grows over 200' tall so I am not sure how that one constitutes a big example"

Well, that's why I said it wasn't magnificent...I've seen the ones around Lake Maggiore that are huge. It's big by standards of most of the ones in the eastern US, where it has only recently been widely commercially available! (Mine is growing agonizingly slowly.) This one is probably 25'-ish - I think the one at NCSU is roughly the same size. I didn't know they were common in SoCal, that seems rather odd. Why use trees from monsoon climates that need so much summer watering? Even Cedrus deodara makes more sense there, the Kashmir is not very wet in summer compared to China.

FWIW there's a huge Abies alba at Longwood that looks as good as any other fir there. (the same can't be said about several others, like the Abies concolor they have) On a pure basis of climate comparison, PIcea abies shouldn't do well on the US east coast, either. Yes, if I could still plant only one or the other in the DC area, (A. firma or A. alba) Abies firma is probably a safer bet for being able to get established without difficult and disease problem; but OTOH this particular groove of various firs shows that many others don't need to be ruled out. In Mobile, AL, yes you probably are only limited to A. firma and maybe a couple others. Not here. Even the Abies nephrolepis tucked into the Asian collection seem perfectly healthy, and that comes from a very different climate. (They are very sharp, like Picea pungens or worse!)

Next trip to DC, Davidrt28 might visit the adjacent Anacostia riverside. He will see an area completely and totally TRASHED with Ampelopsis, Kolkwitzia, & Callicarpa. The NA used Americorps volunteers to try and remove tens of thousands of Linden Viburnums from their forest understory, am not sure how that went. The unhappy legacy of the NA is their promotion of Bradford Pear which we have posted about many times. The beautiful and venerable nearby Belt Woods understory has been infested with Winged Euonymus. So you can see why I can't get excited about berry producing Asian introductions. A sound argument could by made for every berry producing plant in the NA's Asian Valley to be removed and stumps painted with herbicide.

Thanks, Dave. The VA State Arb has a grouping of exotic firs that are pretty big. Below, the tallest is A. holophylla -- guess about 80' tall:

Wow, you can't keep everyone happy around here!

Sam, I agree invasive are a huge problem and the 'gubment' hasn't always been helpful. (wasn't Kudzu imported by one of the southern states?) But we don't know that the Tetradium will become invasive. It's obvious the majority of non-native plants do not.* Furthermore, invasives usually become a problem within an environmental context. The woods along the Anacostia are bisected by many roads, railroad ROWs, and other openings. Even w/o invasives, these factors may keep an ideal ecosystem from developing there. As I'm always saying, much of the US east coast, at least along the 95 corridor, is in some sense a lost cause anyhow. There's no way to return it to the natural state unless we remove all the roads, and development, that create unnatural forest edges that become overrun with poison ivy and wild grape - native edition - or Ivy - non-native edition. Also, it's been proven that our over-population of deer are affected the normal development of woodlands and among other problems cause the favoring of invasives. So, unless we are willing to restore wolves, mountain lions or whatnot to the ecosystem, you might never restore whatever the virgin forest was here before this happened.

* - again, at the Nat. Arb., they mow the area around the firs. This creates forest edges which would otherwise not exist. The fir seedlings were along those edges.

I'm not a 'nativist', and there's only so much we can do. However, I am in favor of, WHEN POSSIBLE, removing Kudzu, Pyrus calleryana, etc and planting native trees. I've noticed that along some highways in Howard and Prince George's counties, they have removed some of the invasives (you can see dead kudzu vines hanging from the oaks, red maples, and tuliptrees along I-95) and planted trees like oaks, redbuds, sycamores, and even some sugar maples.

Oh, and $#&* the damn deer. They're overpopulated and destroy gardens and trees.

David - BTW - I wonder if a call or email to the NA would be worthwhile regarding the Abies seedlings? Could be some interesting crosses there, as you said.

I think it's really, really unlikely they would officially allow anyone to remove those. Like, I'd bet my life and the life of those dear to me on it. Not the way the bureaucratic mind operates, at least in the US.

Taiwania aren't common in California, there are certain liberally watered collections that have some of the larger North American examples with published measurements. Even in Britain Abies alba is notorious for being problematic in the less favorable areas - again I would like to have it confirmed that eastern North American examples being shown here are in fact that species.

Grown in North America since [before/during]1847, overall, it is inferior in insect-resistance, strength and endurance to A. nordmanniana, so has been comparatively little planted in recent years, but its cultivars offer special opportunities

--North American Landscape Trees (1996 Arthur Lee Jacobson)

(Where the record sized cultivated examples he listed were both in Scotland)

Subject to injury from late spring frosts and one of the least satisfactory species for the southern counties of the British Isles

--The Hillier Manual of Trees & Shrubs (2002 Hillier Nurseries)

Out here there is almost no wholesale production of the typical species but several cultivars are grown and sold; I have seen a very few planted examples in my area - in the midst of many thousands of other Abies.

Highly susceptible to aphid harm and not proving as attractive as most firs here.

--Trees of Seattle - Second Edition (2006 Arthur Lee Jacobson)

Good point, David, but even at least to make the NA themselves aware of them, and perhaps watch/evaluate them.

And, my plug for McLean Nurseries LOL:

Clockwise from top: Ilex ciliospinosa, the earliest berrying one, 'Always Al', specifically sold as a pollinator for the locally proven Highclere holly, 'James G. Esson' (which IMHO is one of the best conventional looking hollies for the area), Ilex 'Hefcup Buttercup', the variegated Nellie Stevens sport, a tiny cheap 'Scepter' to try again, and a yellow berried Ilex aquifolium, though probably really an X altaclerensis hybrid as Mr. Kuhl speculates is the case with many east-coast tolerant Ilex aquifoliums. I only got the Hefcup because I liked the one at the nursery. The variegation has a painterly inconsistency which I found somewhat distinctive. Looks a bit odd here but on a full sized plant it is nice.

Even better than I. ciliospinosa, I think, is the hybrid 'September Gem', but it's one of the few cultivars or hybrids that can grow here in the mid-Atlantic that he does not have.

This was only about $35 of plants so his prices remain reasonable.

If 'James G. Esson' behaves differently and was an open-pollinated seedling maybe it is from Highclere holly crossed with something else.

Embo...

several other (UK/EU) cultivars of Highclere holly grow just fine on the east coast, too, though, so I'm not sure doing well here is a "different" behavior. McLean also sells 'Camelliafolia' and a couple others; he doesn't sell things he doesn't think are hardy in Baltimore, which is why he doesn't sell Ilex vomitoria(!). It just happens that 'James G. Esson' is common enough that every mid-Atlantic area botanical/municipal garden has one or more, and it's therefore easy to see that it always grows well and consistently here into an attractive pyramidal shaped, English/Highclere-looking holly tree. (dark glossy leaves, showy berries, etc) And in fact even more surprising is that something labeled as Ilex perado and looking pretty much like pictures of ones in the UK is growing just fine at the Rutgers Arboretum in zn 6 NJ! It's possible that some hybrids have merely been selected for looking more like the one parent whose characteristic are considered more desirable...so maybe the Rutgers "Perado" and James G. Esson really are something other than Ilex perado and (Ilex aquifolium X Ilex perado)...I'm not sure it really matters from the horticultural point-of-view if they look exactly like those clones or grexes, as it does from the botanic POV. If you read about hollies you find the taxonomy of that whole complex is very, ummm, up in the air so to speak. cf: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4107862?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Susyn Andrews says "much confusion has existed in the past between these two closely related species". I think since Ilex opaca X European hybrids have proven very difficult though not impossible to create, it's unlikely that particular species explains the hardiness of the various eastern-selected aquifolium/perado complex plants. Futhermore I've seen the few that (probably) exist anywhere in the world and the Ilex opaca dominates. James G Esson wouldn't look like it does if it were 50% northeastern wild Opaca. Opaca blooms over a month after any aquifolium/perado/altaclerensis would, so the test hybrids at Rutgers (aquifolium X opaca) were produced via planned fertilization events where pollen was frozen from a prior year.

Just a thought, maybe the Ilex perado were a case of glacial refugia. So in other words during the ice age, hardy hollies in NW Europe escaped to the Islands to survive. They retained genes for surviving cold winters. When the glaciers retreated, the current Ilex aquifoliums that inhabit western Europe returned from the MIddle East, where they had never been particularly hardiness selected. Who knows. Whatever the case is, Ilex aquifolium X Ilex perado certainly led to an anomalously hardy grex of glossy leaved hollies.

FYI to my untrained eye, that Abies alba looks more like a cephalonica, which would probably do better in DC, esp. in a dry, high location, than Abies alba.

You know, I wondered that myself though I was thinking more of the hybrid Abies borisii-regis.

But look at it this way: I saw wild Abies alba not too far from Italian town of Tirano.e.i., right outside of it. That area north of the Po Valley can have, by European standards, fairly hot & humid summers. In fact I would say Tirano was the 2nd most humid place I remember besides Barcelona: I remember buying a gelato while I waited to change trains. (Milan is 84/64 in summer; the Italian Lakes areas seem to be milder the further west you go, so Stresa is much cooler in summer than say, Lake Garda...which has nights of 68F in July! Gunneras can grow along Lake Maggiore in shade, I doubt they can along Garda.) Maybe it really isn't surprising that a southern-collected Abies alba could do just fine in the Mid-Atlantic, if, again, Picea abies does so well.

'....And, my plug for McLean Nurseries LOL:...'

Big holly score!!

I would love to be able to get back to McLean Nurseries and see what they have some time. Did they have one called 'Proud Mary' - a variegated aquifolium? Just can't find that one -- anywhere.

Also, did they have any 'Cherry Bomb' or 'Winter's Bounty'? Those two are quite nice and fairly benign (from a spiny perspective). I'm a sucker for any Ilex integra or Ilex latifolia hybrids.

Please let us know how they do for you!

I wish there was a holly or Ilex Forum. The Holly Society is just too expensive for me. There's got to be a way to communicate with and share plants with holly people without joining that org.

There is a more hardy (I. perado ssp. platyphylla (Webb & Berth.) Tutin) and a less hardy (I. perado Ait.) wild version of I. perado described. Also supposed I. perado at a botanic garden here are identical to I. x altaclerensis 'Wilsonii'. If I found out the background on this accession I don't remember what the story was - if it might indicate mislabeled material had been circulated or not. Finally I. x altaclerensis 'Belgica' has been grown as I. perado in the past, perhaps still is somewhere - maybe the apparently misidentified 'Wilsonii' originate with material that was mistaken for 'Belgica' by someone who knew that as I. perado.

Dave, sorry, I don't ask him about those. I don't plan to totally stop collecting hollies but I feel with my my recent purchases there I have a pretty nice collection and will focus on keeping these alive LOL. I've got: an early berried one, a big berried one (his clone of Ilex colchica: huge berries), various glossy English looking ones, fat leaved ones (Venus), unusually variegated ones (I do not care for the standard silver edged English one) etc. etc. I agree with you it's an under appreciated genus! You really ought to see the Rutgers collection, sad though it may be, before some bean counter decides that instead of removing the poison ivy vines from all the plants it would be easier to just bulldoze the entire area.

Bboy, maybe the mislabeled one out there made its way east. There can only be so many botanical garden managers who get excited about these plants LOL.

FWIW, here is what should be the real one, taken in habitat:

http://www.rinconcitocanario.com/plantas/pag12/Ilex-perado.html

And my not very good picture. All I can say is these were the largest holly leaves in this collection, but without a ruler in the picture it's hard to get an idea of scale. I can't remember exactly but they were at least 4" long. (This is not an isolated problem; my picture of the stunning Rhododendron protistum hybrids at UC Berkeley do not capture their magnificence.) Notice that most of them were burnt after the winter. I don't especially like this one but if it is a particularly hardy form of I. perado (this would be pretty hardy even for an I. X altaclarensis, given the circumstances) I might ask Mr. Kuhl if he can get a cutting from it. He said he was up there getting cuttings recently but we didn't have time to discuss what he got.

Good to see Mr. Kuhl posted here. I never ask to take pictures of nursery owners but maybe I should start.

Yeah I know the standard variegated one can grow well if sited correctly, I just find the look a bit blah to me. They are also surprisingly common if you keep an eye out for them, at least in the Baltimore/DE/Philly suburbs. Not really common, but around...compared to any other English/Highclere holly, which as a group are pretty rare here. There used to be a big one on my street but I think some BLE-hater cut it down.

Sam! Great photo!

My two variegated English hollies are cherished plants in my yard. I realize they are somewhat pedestrian, but they are doing so well! And are easy to shear. They don't grow super fast. I'll try to get a picture. Just a very minor bit of leaf burn after last winter (in sun). But bounced back quickly. Low-growing branches readily ground-layer, so it's very easy to obtain more plants. I think they can take sun, but with supplemental moisture.

Another good performing variegated English holly cultivar is 'Gold Coast'. Really like this one. It's smaller in all dimensions and more spreading. Good for lower mounding shapes. A bit spiny, but it outperforms 'Honey Maid' by a long shot! I'm yanking that one out.

Still searching for that elusive spineless variegated holly.

I wonder if any of the variegated Highclere hollies (Golden King, etc.) are grown on the East Coast?

I think I saw a Golden King at McLean years ago, but it's not one of the ones he frequently sells. He has a lot of stuff he will custom propagate if you ask: I've asked him for Ilex colchica and the yellow berried aquifolium. The latter plant is small but more or less healthy looking after the prior winters. It's sheltered by other hollies.

I hope Isaias didn't cause too much havoc for everyone. Here mostly wind & rain with more rain in the forecast.

I want to make the case for White Fir in eastern US. I agree with Donald Wyman One of the best of the firs for planting in northern gardens and thoroughly reliable as far north as Boston. It is noted for withstading heat and drought better than most of the other firs.

Interesting that this Rocky Mountains native does so well here in the east. It holds up to our often wet, muggy buggy summers. I don't see needle cast like we see with Col. Blue Spruce. This thread helps to put an end to the myth that firs don't do well in the east. Below are three A. concolor grown from seed. Nice trees, full texture, best in full sun with no crowding. These in eastern Pa.

Here A. concolor in Baltimore.

Donald Wyman's quote "One of the best of the firs for planting in northern gardens and thoroughly reliable as far north as Boston." woefully underestimates the hardiness of A. concolor. It is at least a zone 3a/b species with mature trees found in Edmonton, Alberta. Where I live in southern Ontario, A. concolor is commonly planted from the American border (as warm as 6b) through zone 4.

I agree, big A. concolor in Bedford, PA. But like any fir they are hurt badly by late frosts & can't be grown in spots subjected to that:

Oh Lord, how did this thread get bumped?

Having had a fairly large A. concolor in my yard that ended up a dead fir...especially trying were the summers of 2010, 2011 and 2012...I want to post what Sam said with new emphasis and comments:

I want to make the case for White Fir in eastern US. I agree with Donald Wyman "One of the best of the firs for planting in northern gardens and thoroughly reliable as far north as Boston. It is noted for withstanding heat and drought better than most of the other firs." which isn't the only thing they will potentially need to withstand.

No, they are not the utterly craptastic, guaranteed failures that Picea pungens are, but I think DC is probably just about the very southern limit in the Piedmont...so let's be careful about saying "eastern US". I have seen good looking ones in SE PA and suburban Baltimore, but also some that appeared to be declining. They seem most consistent in NYC metro area and points north (or east). The incredibly heavy Hurricane Irene rains of 2011 was probably the turning point for mine, while Abies firmas laughed it off. A monthly 20+ inches of rain into a loamy clay soil is not something they encounter in their native habitat, to be sure. If I wanted to have one in my zn 7 east coast garden, as with ANY other western US fir, I'd rather have it grafted onto firma. (In fact I just bought one like that last year, I forget the cultivar, it's some kind of yellow-in-winter concolor.)

While I'm talking rare firs, the last of my UNgrafted Abies delavayi died, proving the climate here is just a bridge too far. It took over 5 years for 3 to die though. I have no doubt they would be OK if grafted; there's a guy down in NC who has a grafted-on-firma A. spectabilis. And about the hollies mentioned above, 'Scepter' is now fully established and I think will take anything winter will throw at it, as is the case of the yellow berried aquifolium. As for the theory James G Esson could be a cross with a native American holly seemingly proposed by embo, now actually having such a cross in my garden, I can say it is absolutely clear it is not. If there is anything else in there, it's another Eurasian holly. This based on bloom time and appearance. James G. Esson blooms with the other aquifolium clade hollies, well before the American ones. The hybrid blooms between them and in fact it's going to be interesting to see if it gets enough pollination to produce a good crop of berries. Might be why the hybridizer never released it. The male hybridizer I bought in the picture above finally bloomed well this year, producing a crop of berries on James G. Esson. I had no other male aquifoliums and of course they being rareish garden plants around here, there was nothing else to pollinate it. (they will grow here, a couple english hollies have gotten the chop in this area in the past decade. Looking too decadently evergreen I guess bwahaha)

Hi David!

Are elevated salt levels a problem along the east coast?

The reason I ask is, when visiting Grand Bahama island, a resident on the island commented about the last hurricane that occurred there. He said a hurricane would lift large amounts of sea water off the ocean, high into the air, then as the storm hit land, it would drop the salt water in combination with the rain, sort of a 'salt rain'.

He said they would loose palm trees there by the multitudes when this happened. I can't remember which, if it was the salt affecting the leafy tops of the trees or getting into the soil.

Only on the immediate coast do you get salt spray like that.

I think some areas are prone to incursion of brackish water into the water table though. I mainly hear of this in relation to wells though, not gardens. (have family in Norfolk/VA Beach) I think the surface gets enough water via rainfall to keep the salt 'washed out'. I see normal vegetation growing within a few feet of various brackish creeks in SE VA.

Smivies noted that White Fir is winter hardy to zone 4 at least and that is appreciated. The reference that I quoted is Trees for American Gardens. I don't think that Dr. Wyman intentionally left out our neighbors to the north. He is associated with Boston because of his connection with the nearby arboretum for 35 years. Smivies point is well taken.

What I really miss is posters like salicaceae, esh_ga and lucky. When they packed up and left the Trees Forum has a void for SE USA.

OT (but not really) a couple of decades ago tobacco growers were given incentives to switch to Christmas trees and many did. They also sell B&B trees to include white fir, I see scores of them

come up to our trade show every January. Check our the video of Barr Evergreens as they dig fir.

Sam,

maybe you missed this part:

No, they are not the utterly craptastic, guaranteed failures that Picea pungens are, but I think DC is probably just about the very southern limit in the Piedmont...

This nursery/tree farm you link to is in the NC mountains. I did a quick google tour of LOCAL Raleigh, NC tree farms and NONE of them offer on-site grown Firs of any kind! Just the traditional southern-style christmas trees, and white pines. Of course most of them sell firs that have been "imported" from the mountains, already cut of course.

The NCSU arboretum has a surprising varieties of non-firma firs, but it's quite possible at least some are grafted onto firma, since it was, after all, JC Raulston who did more to popularize this idea (grafting things onto locally resistant rootstocks) than perhaps any other single American horticulturalist.

Well thanks Dave!

I think that clears that up for me. Just thinking if salt, even in lesser amounts could put the kibosh on certain trees from out west.

And I don't think they were talking about spray so much as the storm would actually suck up huge amounts of sea water, send it to tremendous heights and then redistribute that water over a large area over land.

"And I don't think they were talking about spray so much as the storm would actually suck up huge amounts of sea water, send it to tremendous heights and then redistribute that water over a large area over land."

I think it's just degree of same phenomena, probably. Will check with my relatives who lived right on the oceanfront since the 1970s, but I think they've said in really bad storms, the salt spray damage goes several blocks inland, but at Virginia Beach at least it only happens that badly once every couple decades.

While I'm in a gardenwebby mood...going to bump this to follow-up on a discussion I had w/Bill Kuhl a couple weekends ago. Re: the interesting foster X highclere holly.

"Might be why the hybridizer never released it." - I wrote a year ago. Well I hadn't never really extensively discussed these with him. He now vaguely remembers hearing that Orton at Rutgers was having trouble getting a male to hybridize this American X Eurasian hybrid. Because American hollies bloom so much later than Highclere/Aquifolium/etc. So that IS why they were not "released". As for why I have a plant...I don't know what happened - I was rooting some plants one winter and Poof! a few cuttings of it appeared in some styrofoam cups. They rooted. Wow, what a lucky break. Dave has one too that I gave him, so between 2 collectors gardens of various hollies, we will see if any males bloom at the right time for it to be hybridized.

Mind you the trees at Rutgers did have a few berries, so not a matter of it being sterile, or male.

i bought one more male aquifolium from him to try to up the chances of having pollen available. Going to plant it in the coolest, lowest part of my garden in hope of making it bloom as late as possible!