Thank you all for your favorites. I'm going to look into all of them and appreciate hearing about them regardless of if I can grow them or not. flattie, which do you like better A. lasiocarpa var. arizonica or A. concolor? Also, how large has your 'dwarf' and 'blue cloak' (or even the A. lasiocarpa var. arizonica)grown? Since, I already grow Piñon, Opuntia(both KS native and SW natives), Junipers, Oaks(many native to NM and Mexico), and Banana Yucca, I'm sure I'll have no problems with any A. concolor. Apparently A. concolor does well here, even in our clay soils. Other than humidity and rainfall, I'd say my weather generally is quite similar to a lot of NM, so I often have good success with plants I see growing in Albuquerque for example. My biggest problem is that most Abies grow too large for where I can plant them. I noticed a few people around who have bought Abies koreana 'silberlocke' and they look to be doing quite well. The few I've seen for sale locally are a bit on the pricey side($350) because they are already large for the cultivar. I also like to see what other people say is their favorite Fir regardless of whether or not I'll ever attempt to grow their favorite.

Should live to 100 years or a little less. A grafted plant - well, nobody has ever studied side by side representations/similar conditions; I do think it would be an interesting study. After all, Abies firma is the revolutionary understock of the decade allowing the growing of other Fir species down in the southermost places in The United States and probably worldwide in other climates as well. Not the best of all the firs - Abies nordmanniana is. Dax

Here you go! Keep in mind some plants just don't have as nice a color here in the Midwest. The older needles look like A. concolor thats why I was leaning that way. One plant died during its flush when I received it and I took the tags off the day of.

The soil being wet in winter usually isn't the problem hairmetal. At least usually not with plants bigger than forbs or geophytes; and of course discounting some nervous nellies like Daphne odora which can die at any time of year if someone so much as sneezes on one. (ok...a bit of hyperbole) Wet...but not saturated. Of course, only an aquatic conifer like Taxodium is going to grow in a swamp that is constantly wet. The problem with most plants from mountain climates is hot wet soil in summer. For example in the PNW I saw rhododendrons planted in low spots...not quite the bottom of a swale but close...where they would surely die if planted in a similar situation on the east coast. In the PNW they don't have to worry about 4" of rain from one July storm and soil temps. going well above 80F. A. pindrow is definitely zn 7 hardy, there's one at the Arnold Arboretum though I don't know how old it is. (http://arboretum.harvard.edu/explorer/) There was one at least 12' tall at the old Dilworth Nursery in Oxford, PA. Though Oxford isn't very far from me as the crow flies, it's MUCH colder, having freezes much earlier in the fall and having been below 0F at least a few times in the past decade. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that plant was probably destroyed when the nursery was sold. (Google already has recent satellite images: you can see the pockmarked fields here: http://goo.gl/maps/abdXO) They had a 2-3 acre field of stock plants, when I drove by there a few months ago it was a plowed field. Heart breaking. I hope they found someone to broker the sale of those but I guess it's so expensive to move them at that size, maybe not. Here is a link that might be useful: http://arboretum.harvard.edu/explorer/ This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Sep 13, 13 at 2:23