Yes, very nice indeed. You'll be giving Morris Arb a run for their money.

Heck yeah! Nice conifer to non-conifer ratio ratio as well.

Triple-leader on the Nordmann. Double on the Nikko.

North GA is in drought, but your spot doesn't look bad judging from the grass.

So near yet so far, very rare to see fir in middle TN. I guess elevation is the key. Great looking trees.

Great looking trees, thanks for taking the time.

tj

Thanks for posting. Which has been the fastest for you? I'm going to guess A. firma. (assuming if you had planted them all at roughly the same time, you would have mentioned it...but maybe I'm partly inferring it)

A. firma is definitely the fastest fir I'm growing! The A. homolepis plants were planted later. I'm also growing a "strain" of A firma that has the latest bud break of any Abies species I've tried, eliminating much of the usual "frost pocket" dilemma.

Abies fraseri planted in 1972 with seedling/s collected at Richland Balsam Mtn. just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Long distance poor quality photo

20X shot of crown with apparent light cone crop this year

Basal photo of the same specimen with 29" length machete for reference. I've never tried to measure circumference or height!

And the "back side" ? haha

We had a late May frost here that hurt several conifers, and Abies was especially hard hit...except for A. Fraseri, which has to be one of the most unsung native conifers there is.

I'm bumping the latest "firs in the southeast" thread - not one of my own older ones - to say one of my 3 Abies delavayi seems to be dying of root rot. But this is not particularly upsetting. I considered all of the tiny Abies I planted a few years ago to be experimental, and some died incredibly quickly like A. lasiocarpa. I will just let the others do as they may, I don't plan to apply an emergency dose of anti-fungal to them, even though they are only 2 feet away. If they die they die. I'd rather them show they cannot survive the local oomycetes now rather than when they are 10 feet tall.

I have seen with the Larix kaempferi formerly sold by the VA forestry office that there is probably some variation in survivability of such alpine conifers in a hot humid area like this. Most interestingly, my largest which is actually in a rather poorly drained spot, got some branch dieback 2 years ago that sure looked like root rot, but somehow "shook it off" a couple months later and continued growing at a good clip. About 2 out of 8 have survived...roughly what you'd expect for a recessive trait. I would never rely on them for being the most important shade makers but I want to have a few, they are really cool looking when mature. Larix mastersiana continues to seem more heat resistant, having never had any dieback or checking, but is agonizingly slow growing compared to either the Japanese larch or the hybrid ones*. If anyone wants to try to graft that, which would preserve it albeit without benefiting from its stronger root system, please let me know.

If I can ever find some Abies firma seedlings and actually get my stupid brain and unskilled hands to graft correctly, I will try to graft the best of the remaining clones (hopefully!) of A. delavayi onto firma. One of them was a little later to leaf out, and it is still alive. That is a useful trait for us.

Maybe resin will finally believe they are actually Abies delavayi now (LOL).

* - and a good time to remind people that ALL of my hybrid Dunkeld larches died over the years. Some after getting quite big, very quickly: from forestfarm tubes to 10' tall with 1"+ caliper trunks in only a few years, maybe 4. There's not really such a thing as hybrid vigor anymore when the trees are 4 or 5 generations away from the original crosses and highly inbred.

Nice abies

David, my 22', 11-yr old Dunkeld larch from ForestFarm is on its last leg (grew well at first). Norway spruce planted at its base this spring -- at least I know that will grow well.

Japanese larch nearby is fine & 30' tall.

"grew well at first" - ha, that should be the motto of trying a Larch tree, especially one of the hybrids, in the mid-Atlantic region.

I wonder if the old healthy look L. decidua and L. kaempferi at Longwood were, because of their age and wealthy cultivator, collected from very quality genetic sources. (i.e., actually wild collected in Japan and rural Europe) Maybe they could "recross" Dunkelds there LOL.

David, I agree, there should be some effort to infuse some fresh larch genes from their native areas into the trade. Inbreeding is causing predictable problems. That issue might eventually surface for dawn redwoods, but I read there were some good efforts recently to bring more dawn redwoods into the US trade from China.