Well there you go the Scottish experience seems to be the dead opposite to here. Maybe they survived in the gorge because they were away from the bushfires otherwise they might have been in the open as well. They did find fossils near here in a quarry. That is a good 500 + km sth from their gorge location. Liz
Liz, I strongly suspect your information about a protected site is probably the way to go. The low temperatures reported for the Scottish specimens are so far (-7c) well within the ranges reported here. In my case, I actually cosidered planting my WP in a steep stream bed, but (as noted above for the South) opted for drainage instead of protection to minimize the chance of root rot. In drier or less sweltering climates, I would probably have tried a different approach. Danc, I very much appreciate the information in your posts as do I am sure others on this board. I do not consider what you are doing a game, but firmly in the tradition of heroic gardening and I salute you for your efforts and reporting! Dvance
Hi guys, We planted this Wollemia nobilis in Halifax N.S. It was planted out in spring last year 2009 and here it is looking very healthy in 2010. For it's first winter it was protected with one of those styrofoam rose cones. Halifax is a Canadian zone 6, some say that is usda zone 5?? Not bad eh! At least as hardy as a Monkey Puzzle...... Now I'll try it in my zone 5 Canadian....... Hope the photo uploaded, I can't see it??? http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=79759&stc=1&d=1271101578
Early in the spring, I coppiced both wollemi pines. I would cut the leaders by small pieces as long as they looked dead. Then stopped at about 2 inches above the ground as I could not tell anymore if the next piece was dead or not. I am glad I stopped and did not rush to pull both from the ground out of great disappointment. Actually, right after that, I started to wonder if I had gone too far in how much I cut (and even if I should have better not touched them, as Michael had one suggested). Nevertheless the tops were dead. No doubt. Now the good news is the second wollemi pine (what is left of it) looks alive. And I have noticed two buds to become epicormic shoots (if I am not mistaken). Second picture below is from another angle and only one bud is visible. All the risk I had taken was worth it. But next winter, if one or both really survived I would definitely protect them. So I suppose this is how the wollemi pine would survive a transitional colder climate.
I would not say I will not make mistakes again, but it is certain I will try not to repeat the ones I already made. Now I should be able to post pictures of the new shoots. But I am not. I was curious how many leaders would have been produced. There was another, I believe, final blow. The buds grew fast, at first there were two or three of them, but they disappeared overnight. I soon realized the limax were the ones that ate them. Then I tried to block the limax (there were hundreds of them after a very rainy month) from reaching the wollemi again, hoping other buds would burst out. And to my relief, there were even more buds than the first time. I tried both the chemical and mechanical protection. Then I was away for a week, and when I got back, all the buds were gone again. After a few more days with no sign of budding, I decided to re pot it. The root seemed fine, so maybe I just have to wait until the next spring.
DaveK, if you are asking about mine, they did not survive after re-potting (most likely they were already dead). If I hadn't made two or more big mistakes, they would have survived at least that hard winter/spring, though crippled and with probably no chance to grow as in its natural habitat. I think I will give other tries to planting outside only when I succeed in cloning it either by air layering or cuttings. I put much hope in air layering, but reproducing by cuttings seems impossible for me. Here is an interesting video, the second half is about wollemi pine http://www.skillsone.com.au/industry/8/rural--farming/video/420/positive-propagation/
I have a Wollemi pine that I planted last year in Tofino that did very well, but this spring its growing tip came up fairly early with a false spring, and now it has turned brown & hard. Is it best to leave it alone or cut this tip off? It's still a small plant, and I had to prune several lower branches that had come very sun-damaged from the nursery I got it from. Any advice greatly appreciated. Eileen
I would not cut it off until new epicormic buds emerge as it's hard to tell the damage extent, it may do more harm. Can you post a picture?
I've seen a 14 foot (4.3 meters) tall Wollemi pine growing in someone's front yard in Milwaukie, Oregon (not far from Portland). That area is in climate zone 8a, but it is in the middle of the suburbs, which probably helps. They said they paid $300 for the tree when it was 3 feet tall, but I think that was years ago when Wollemi pines were very hard to find. The tree looks like it is doing very well, barely any sign of winter damage.
this spring its growing tip came up fairly early with a false spring, and now it has turned brown & hard I've seen same or similar condition on one at Humboldt State University very near the Pacific Ocean in northern California. (The setting there is native coast redwoods = mild winter climate). It looked quite like cold damage to me.
I had spotted this (untagged) Wollemi pine in a park a couple of years ago, it's now about 3m tall (10 feet). It seems to have suffered, maybe from the heat wave last year because we had a mild winter.
It's in "Parc Pasteur", in the city centre of Orléans. The epicentre of three high schools, one of them used to be an all-girl school in the late sixties, the place where young people met, for good or for worse. In "my time", it was forbidden to sit on the grass, the caretaker, who at that time would wear uniform would blow his whistle and tell us to get away, sometimes even taking a hose to shoo us out while we were trying to seduce the girls from the other school stumming stupid songs on cheap guitars <LOL>
Today we would think it odd that lawns would not be for sitting on and other passive - as well as active - human use. But the lawn did in fact arise as a showpiece - specifically as a way to impress visiting nobles during the European feudal period when livestock was a scarce and valuable commodity. By making it look like there must be a considerable number of animals around somewhere on the estate that accounted for all that grass being kept so short. So that past situation on the Orleans site where the lawn was considered a purely decorative feature not to be "spoiled" by visitors sitting on it actually harkens back hundreds of years to the origin of the kept lawn.
Not there, but it's very trendy these days, along the banks of the river Loire (goats for the wild blackberries, sheep for the grass) or in some places like big companies compounds.
I think it was more about impressing the visitors with short grass you could enjoy walking/sitting on without all the turds produced by grazing livestock - at the outer edge of the lawn was a ditch with a vertical inner wall (called a ha-ha) to stop the abundant animals outside from coming onto the lawn but to make the lawn appear to continue endlessly.
I'm enjoying the insights on this thread about the origins and significance of lawns. Digressing a bit from the original 2010 focus on Wollemi Pines but all the more interesting regardless. I can relate to turds defacing the lawn - on my 'lawn', they're produced by worms - hundreds of worms. If only a ha-ha could keep them at bay.
