I've had a lot of trouble with Firs dampening off. I'd recommend you keep real good control of fungus occuring on the top of the soil the seedlings are in, spray them with an algaecide/fungicide such as Consan20 and if maybe even go so far as adding a fungicide to your poting mix. As per chilling requirements, definitely use sand (use sand for all your seed cold-stratification anyway). I buy sand in a tube, I believe it's called construction sand or brown sand, and heat up a batch at a time for 3 minutes in a microwave oven. Rotate your seeds too every week or so or every two weeks by agitating the sand in the bag and allowing fresh air into each bag for a few minutes prior to placing back into your refridgerator. It might even be an excellent idea to treat the sand and seeds with a fungicide dip as well. This is just the extra information I assume you're looking for and coincidentally you asked about Firs so I have this to share with you. Keep the sand damp but not wet. It's a gut thing. Pinus strobiformis I assume but do no know it's germination requirements should be very easy if it is anything like Pinus strobus. Dax

Sorry beng, but thanks for the update. I wonder if Longwood does anything to keep their beautiful larch trees alive in SE PA. I think like knowing how sausage is made, you aren't really supposed to know what they might or might not do in terms of chemical treatment. There is a tree in a private garden west of Harrisburg. It's always been growing in the shade of pines so perhaps that kept its root run cool and relatively dry...? OTOH there has been solid evidence of a handful them still growing well in parts of the deep south like Alabama. I once analyzed the records of - who was it, MIssouri Botanic Garden? I can't even remember now - and noticed that, just as I suspected, the ones to have survived there long-term were grown from seed collected in Japan. The ones that died probably came from European forestry sources = inbred. No current seed vendor has seeds collected in Japan, and many hours spent in google translator to try to locate a Japanese native seed seller were unsuccessful; the US horticulturalist living in southern Japan who posts to various other boards told me he had never encountered any interest in selling seeds of most native species. According to him, In the very rare case someone wants a wild plant there, they just go dig one up.

According to a molecular analysis the tazaotana taxon is not different from marocana, while another Moroccan population is showing some difference. If the resinous or non-resinous buds is the only difference, then it is not significative. It can be attributed to natural variability. Especially if observed on cultivated trees.

Forgive me for my outburst earlier. I'd had a difficult day of fighting an army of Hibiscus syriacus seedlings before their pods opened. I don't know why this "plants can't grow anywhere other than places that exactly match their habitat" mentality won't die. A lot of them prefer that to be the case, some of them need it to be the case, but it's certainly the exception to the rule if you want to be picky about the climate specifics. For example in the UK they can still grow many California natives because the summers are still cool enough that root rots don't set it during the moist summers. Many E. Asian plants can tolerate the drier summers of the US east coast. Something like Metasequoia was found in an area of China that is zn 8, but is zn 5b hardy. etc. etc. Believe me I know many SW Asian/Himalayan montane species are ungrowable in my climate; it's not like I'm trying to grow meconopsis here. If there were to be an exception a Conifer/Pinaceae/Abies would be a good place to start. After the whole fiasco of the Carlisle, PA, trees (I need to go back there to see them again but my current thinking is at least _one_ of the plants Greg called a SE Asian fir was probably a root stock that grew after the top died. However, Spruceman's tree, which came from the same "batch" via that nursery, looks very different, and I'd surmise is what the Carlisle tree I once mistakenly thought was A. delavayi, should have been...if that makes sense) Anyhow after all that, I'd somewhat scrutinized these seedlings. They have a "whiter" back to the needles than any fir I've ever seen. They have the crusty resin covered buds. They had the right overall needle morphology. So, if Resin actually saw some detail I missed, he should be so kind as to explain himself. (You'd have to assume Chinese traders believe there to be some huge demand for these firs such that instead of honestly collecting them, they substitute some other low elevation fir that, presto...looks and smells just like the real thing should, to this layman's eyes and nose. That's highly improbable. The only obvious, cheap substitute possibly used for forestry in China would be Abies firma...and they are most definitely not that. It's a highly implausible scenario...this isn't some rare orchid or cycad. (or meconopsis!)) * - which, in the grand scheme of things, maybe it really isn't. The hotter air is, the more humidity it can hold. It's never _not_ humid here in the summer. Notwithstanding soil (and air, obviously) temps being higher in summer, you're still talking: climate with seasons, climate with cold winter, climate with moist summers. Although the dewpoint is lower in montane SW China, it's very close to the high temperature. All of the western US firs die here because in contrast, their summers are very dry, with dewpoint 40F or more below the air temp. So the only thing these firs would have to adapt to, is having a higher soil temperature in summer. Calocedrus growing to be 80' trees at Longwood Gardens are making more of an adaptation than these SW Asian plants. Again, if some early pioneers hadn't tried to plant Sequoia sempervirens on the east coast 60 years ago, the maritime climate supremacists would say "impossible, they would never grow for more than a couple years on the east coast. The climates are far too dissimilar". ( they are at least as dissimilar as SW Asia and the US east coast!) In fact one of the only posts I remember making on gardenweb back in the late 90s - an era I can't even remember what user ID I was using - was correcting someone who had said that about redwoods. I had the argument several times since then, including with someone whom I vaguely recall had characterized himself as some kind of academic expert on conifers. He was shocked there really were redwoods on the east coast.