Happy 4th! A temporary brain hiccup remembering how to spell a word, got me thinking about something. (lore vs. lure which of course have very different meanings, and then I thought of 'allure') I've been here for at least 15 years, I think I was a lurker starting in the late 90s but didn't become a very active poster until I started my current garden in 2006. Over the years people have posted about some really interesting plants, and I'm sure a lot of people discovered something here they now have in their garden. I'm X-posting to perennials because we sort of have 2 crowds here, the 'trees/shrubs' group and 'perennials/bulbs', but I think it would be most interesting to have a crossover posting event!

The live oak thread had already reminded me of one of these plants

So post a plant you've read about on these (internet) pages, that you still remember to this day. Only rule is you have to have found out about it here. It may very well be that it is not commercially available. And I'm not going to bother to go find the threads, old-timers will remember most of them I'm sure.

In no particular order:

1) The Golden live oak. Absolutely amazing looking although I can see people in the south worrying about it becoming over planted if it were commercialized.

2) The Octopus Spruce. A large spruce with a bizarre branching pattern; never seen anything else like it in the annals of conifer collection. Odd story I outlined on that thread: a very very long time ago, someone here had posted a picture via photobucket. Maybe, 2008 ish. I visited at the time and found additional pictures that were interesting. (That way you could URL hack to get back to the person's main 'bucket') I saved them and years later rediscovered them, not knowing at this point, who had originally posted them but IIRC, the former poster Jason/Willows said he knew who. But he never revealed where the octopus spruce was if he knew.

3) The bright red bald cypress. If there really is a bald cypress with blazing red, japanese maple fall color as was shown in the picture, I'm a shame that clone wasn't preserved as a cultivar. But you never know, maybe it was slightly photoshopped.

4) The Bretschneidera sinensis. Still my dream plant in terms of "please someday be available, in zone 7 hardy form". It would be the most spectacular zone 7 hardy tree in my opinion.

5) Picea 'Warrior'. I don't know if P. engelmannii would have the same problems P. pungens does in non-native climates. But I vividly remember the striking form of this plant and wanting one for my garden.