Very nice blue color showing.

Thanks for posting.

:-)

Yes, a nice blue. Thanks for the pic.

tj

Lots of grass and weeds cut today but lots remaining!

Nice! Looks taller. ;-)

Good growth & stunning color, almost metallic blue. It's a more pleasing tone than the blue spruces and such....

Wasn't Vejar that big alien contraption that threatened Earth in the first Star trek movie?

Conifer50 - I have one of the firma-grafted plants for which you supplied scions to CK. It is green...is that from the one that 'flopped over', which you've also posted a picture of here? They also offered a 'blue' cultivar at the time, but I prefer green.

Growing well so far in spite of the worst drought in 10 years here...because of course, I'm watering it!

Hi David, you're spot on as to the 'vejarii' you acquired!.....one of 18 like scions

So, just to confirm, you have seedlings you've grown out of this that were green, and (more) blue like in the picture?

David, I've never received cone/seeds from the snow damaged Abies vejarii !

Sorry the way I phrased that was confusing. I know you haven't grown seed from your own A. vejarii. What I meant to ask, both of these forms are ones you grew yourself, from Mexican seed?

Can you post an updated pic of the green, fallen-over-but-ok A. vejarii?

I purchased one of the "Blue Mountain" a.vejarii (on bornmuelleriana) from conifer kingdom and it is growing well in mid TN. I also had the green one from CK (on firma) but it was killed by -4° last december (2022), so i guess the blue one came from higher elevation stock?

Interesting. It's entirely possible the glaucous one is hardier. But there could be other factors at play. It's worth noting that the Dec 2022 freeze was exceptional not so much for the temps, although -4F is plenty cold for most parts of TN, but because it was preceded by a mild spell in the upper South and many plants were not fully dormant. Temps had been in the 50s or even 60s and then dropped to the single digits or lower THE NEXT DAY. I heard of some areas having almost unprecedented damage to normally hardy plants. From NC all the way over to Arkansas. The saving grace is that larger, more established plants returned from roots because it wasn't prolonged enough to really deeply freeze the soil. Although it wasn't too devastating up here because we hadn't been as mild, that was the case in my garden where a Callistemon 'Woodlanders Hardy' is coming back from the roots. (and no, I know that might not be long term hardy here, but it's the sort of plant that could do great if we get another 5-8 year string of mild winters. I will keep a backup in my garage which is going to be my policy for all tender-ish rarities going forward)

So maybe the firma rootstock, coming from Asia, is a little shy to go dormant during warm spells in winter vs. A. bornmuelleriana, because Asian plants are generally not adopted to wide swings in winter temperature. And therefore the top wasn't as dormant as it needed to be. Just an idea. I doubt anyone has done research on such an arcane area of horticulture.

You are making me wonder if I should have given mine another year in a pot. Too late now!

Good thought on the rootstock being the variable. I will say that i had them planted right next to each other.

Different subject: i think you and Conifer50 have been posting about conifers on houzz for a number of years and i just wanted to say thanks for all the info you put into the forum. Houzz has been one of the best sources of info for me in my quest to build out my conifer & BLE collection.

There used to be a couple other guys also, i think one was named "Ken", maybe from Wisconsin, and another named "resin" from the UK. Those guys also posted a lot. What happened to those guys?

Regarding the 2022 freeze: I lost 100% of cryptomerias and arizona cypress "carolina saphire". The blue ice cultivar of arizona cypress was fine. Pinus glabra: fine, Pinus Elliotti: fine. I lost all cedrus deodara except for "karl fuchs". Calocedrus decurrens: fine. Sequoia sempervirens "inman select", dead. Cedrus libani, dead. Thuja plicata "hogan" badly burnt then blown over by wind.

Moses, I'd say the guy from Wisconsin you mentioned was WisconsinTom.

Davidrt, one bit of evidence of cold damage I have here are butterfly bushes and crape myrtles. Tho the AVG temp over the winter was actually above avg, the cold episode you mention pretty much has to be the reason both the above mentioned plants (several of each species) were all killed to the ground. So were all the previous summer's 6 ft sprouts of a cut mimosa tree. One crape myrtle seems practically dead after 15 or so years.

Wow Moses, the thought of Cryptomerias dying in pretty shocking. But, again, 60F followed the next day by -4F is just something that could never happen in Japan. A coworker in Arkansas told me plain old Kurume azaleas (not his exact description, but I'm making an educated guess) had their tops killed which he had never seen before.

Thanks for the kind words btw. So many people have come and gone over the years but I have learned a lot here, too. There was a poster years ago, pinetree30 I think he went by. That was actually Dr. Ronald Lanner, now departed. I ended up unknowingly buying his copy of 'Conifers Around the World' on Amazon, from a used book store in California!

Beng, how low did it go? Luckily only 5F here, but, like Moses, you are at a lot more elevation than me and have no large bodies of water nearby.

My neighbor has had a bog standard - not USNA bred for hardiness - crape myrtle in his yard since the mid 1980s. He said the only time it was killed to ground was 1994. That was the incredible winter that was so cold, you could walk from DC or MD to VA on the Potomac!

😱

davidrt, got to -2F and that day w/strong winds didn't get over 5 or 6F. Flash-froze the soil to rock-hardness.

Concerning CMs, I agree, seems the old straight species was/is just as hardy or hardier than the "new" selections. Had 2 standards at house growing up w/same winters as here (76-77 and 77-78 were brutal), and those would never be killed to the ground - might even have relatively little stem death.

Also noticed that several (not mine) Blue Atlas cedar's foliage were burnt to brown, but those were able to regrow needles this season, tho still look skimpy. Also my 25 ft ginkgo, even tho it hadn't leafed out at the time, was nevertheless damaged by the severe late April freezes to where the unusually-late emerged leaves are all only about half their usual size (except a few big ones here and there). Perhaps most primary buds were killed and emerged leaves are from secondary buds. A similar issue w/my 50 ft dawn redwood, unusually skimpy-looking.

I have got an Abies vejarii in the ground, but it's still pretty small. I grafted it myself onto A. firma from a plant I bought from Larry Stanley before he sold his business. It's quite blue, so I suspect it's from the same ultimate parent that CK is selling. It survived 7F this past winter (the parent, on unknown rootstock, died).

How much bigger was the parent? But, again, I don't think it was the 7F that was the problem. It was the warm spell leading up to it.

Maybe six inches bigger. But I had extensively harvested it for scions, so it was sort of deformed. It was also in a pot, which may have mattered in those cold temps.

Oh definitely! that helps clear things up immensely. A plant loses at least a zone of hardiness in a pot. Also harvesting for scions would have weakened it. I'm glad you have the clone, though I myself have little to no interest in collecting glaucous conifers.

Although it is true that the 12/22 "rapid freeze" event dropped from 50° to -4° (wind chill -25°) in a short time, every tree in my collection was subjected to the same conditions and none were sheltered or protected (meaning this was a test with control groups for comparison). The biggest suprise of all was that illicium parviflorum suffered no damage whatsoever and didn't loose a single bud.

Back to firs: my abies fargesii still hasn't broken bud and i guess it won't this year. Abies beishanzuensis lost all but one bud, but the mature foliage was not damaged - and it has already created new buds for next year. Douglas fir was fine as well (i know genus is pseudotsuga). I lost the leader bud on abies firma. Abies pinsapo lost all buds. Abies kawakamii was fine, as was concolor, nordmann, homolepis, and koreana.