Additional Info: I'm not talking about trying to get a z9 plant to survive z6. I'm asking for things that are just on the edge of my 6b zone like Araucaria araucana, which can survive here, but often has winter burn. With the internet now, it's a lot easier to acquire seed from range extremes, without having to travel there. I was able to acquire Araucaria araucana seed from a high altitude, very southern (colder) range of the monkey puzzle in Argentina.

Sure, you understand. Sow a few hundred or a thousand seeds and see which are depleted by mother nature. Or, purchase seedlings and do the same.

Dax

or... traveling collectors... head into warmer zones ... and see things they dont see where they live.. and they take a shot.. and carry them north ... and see if they can beat ma nature ... in the zone pushing game ,...

i did that many a time ... and ALWAYS ... ended up losing ... sometimes immediately ... other times.. when the next bad winter hit ...

and that would be my guess on finding which 'cultivars' are such ....

ken

SC, quite possibly not your focus, but state agencies which produce seedlings for reforestation purposes and that sort of thing have long worked to procure the best genetics available for their plantings. Cold hardiness would be apart of this, although buried under more general characteristics of plant performance. In other words, they may not be specifically looking for white pines with a good green needle color, but if a strain of white pine had lousy needle color because it wasn't quite adapted to the coldness of a given area, it would be culled for the former reason, not the latter. And then too, many of these places are being slowly bled to death via constant budget reductions, certainly in places like Wisconsin is nowadays, with the slash and burn mentality that has taken over so much state government, so even the efforts towards this that may have formerly existed are likely running out of steam now.

But in any case, that's one sort of sideways approach to what you might be driving at.

Yep, I think I understand the basic approach, just wasn't sure at which stage/age to expose the seedlings to cold and if it's all in the DNA of the seed or if you can improve their cold hardiness by progressively increasing exposure to cold.

I guess the real issue is getting access to the volume of seed & time required to make selections... I guess I was thinking too big. Sounds like this is best left up to the big wholesalers like Iseli, who have been known to sow 30,000 seeds in an effort to find unique qualities....

Ken, I agree. I usually don't try to play the zone pushing game, because I get smoked every time.... as do most people. The Monkey Puzzle tree just really intrigues me. I am growing some as indoor plants, but will put some of them outside and see how they do. I'm not willing to add any type of visible protection, but would consider adding heating cables in the ground if I can find any evidence that Araucaria is the type of conifer that will tolerate colder foliage temps as long as their roots are warmer... not sure if that is the case.

Thanks for the replies and tolerating my somewhat foolish vision... I don't think it's the backyard gardener who can handle this type of large scale project.

Thanks Tom for the reply as well. Yes, I think I was living in fantasy land when I posted this. The problem is, as you mentioned, resources. I have the time and the interest in doing such a project, but you really need to be sponsored. I have read some of the stories about Sid Waxman @ Uconn and he focused on many traits, not just the ascetic ones. They would attempt to offset some of the costs by selling all of the "regular" plants for reforestation and maybe to home owners as well. But... the fact remains that Waxman was planting 10,000+ seeds in these initiatives. I certainly could never do anything close to that scale...

Maybe Iseli will take on a large scale effort to find cultivars of the monkey puzzle... and maybe accidentally stumble across one that is extra cold hardy! They do like focusing on that trait, as seen in their 'Jack Frost' line of maples. But, Araucaria araucana is the hardiest of the southern hemisphere conifers, so there isn't really the option to hybridize for hardiness as they did with the maples Acer pseudosieboldianum for hardiness and palmatum for good looks.

Thanks SC. Just to touch on one point, plants are said to be "adapted" to this or that condition, but that is something that happens within a species, not an individual. So, red maple-Acer rubrum-can be found in woods from Florida to Ontario. As a species, it is adapted to a wide range of conditions. But take that red maple from outside of Orlando and plant it up in Canada somewhere and it will likely fail in the first winter. The species is adapted to cold winters, but that specific plant is not. Individual plants can acclimate to changed conditions. So, let's say you are starting some petunias in a greenhouse in March. Come May, you might want to plant these petunias outside somewhere. But if you take them from the warm greenhouse and immediately place them outside-and here let's say it gets down in the low 30s F that first night-the plants may struggle. They have not been acclimated to cooler night temps. Take the same petunias and gradually expose them to nighttime coolness, and eventually, they will be acclimated to that condition. The species-Petunia-hasn't changed in terms of its overall cold-hardiness, but those plants you started in your greenhouse can be acclimated to that condition.

sc77, I'm guessing Don & Hazel Smith selected the bluest colored seedling out of a batch of seedlings and named it 'Hazel Smith'. I doubt that they were selecting for cold-hardiness since Giant Sequoia is plenty cold hardy. The organism killing Giant Sequoia in eastern N.A. is Cercospora blight. This Sequoia thread is a good one.

Monkey Puzzle thread is my old thread on MP Tree.

You said its a lot easier to acquire seed from range extremes, could you tell us more about how you got MP seed from Argentina?

@sam_md, I got them on eBay from seller St_Francis_dc. He said he collected them from the Patagonia forest somewhere near Bahía Blanca Argentina. There are a few other South American sellers. Cool thing, is once you make the connection they sometimes know other local sources even farther down in the range.

Recent MP article by Louis The Plant geek, http://www.louistheplantgeek.com/a-gardening-journal/1229-araucaria-araucana-122715

"But, Araucaria araucana is the hardiest of the southern hemisphere conifers,"

One of the hardiest but probably not the hardiest. Maybe I'm the only one who remembers the story in a Fairweather Gardens catalog of the late 1990s of them discovering a huge Austrocedrus chilensis on Cape Cod. The summers on Cape Cod are actually cool and dry enough that Monkey Puzzles should survive the summers there. But as reported of the Polly Hill Arboretum tree, the winters severely stunt their growth or kill them back...it still isn't clear what is going on. Fighting against maritime climate plants from Chile is almost always an exercise in futility, believe me I should know.

I've read that 'Hazel Smith' WAS selected for cold hardiness

ron

Apparently there are already cultivars of Monkey Puzzle. I did not know this. Two of which, were specifically selected for cold hardiness. Doubt they have made it to the US though...

Specifically:

Araucaria Araucana 'Robusta Gheri'

Araucaria araucana 'Kurt Sachs'

http://www.araucaria-araucana.com/cultivars.html

IF those are actually grafted cultivars, once again Europe is far ahead of us in the nursery game. But the relevance to us is limited; obviously the main factor here (eastern US) stopping people from growing them are the summer conditions. Let's assume you are somehow able to get one: true in 6b MA yours might last longer through winter cold; but eventually a hot, muggy period will probably take it out in summer. This has happened, for example, to the people trying to grow selected hardier forms of Rhododendron rex in New England. They can get plants to a semi-established stage and, kaboom! A few hot, wet nights in July and the whole thing collapses. Such nights that just don't happen in northern Europe or PNW, ever.

The best chance to grow randomly selected genotype, anywhere at all on the east coast, is probably to graft them onto parana pine and then grow them in a fairly narrow sliver of 7b/8a from Norfolk down to Atlanta and maybe over to SE TX. But its conceivable that at some point, the south will just be too hot for it, grafted or not. We know they can last for a while in Norfolk though.

Yes, these are grafted cultivars. It does not appear they have currently made it to the states. While I am realistic about long term success, I have to keep thinking that the MPs at Polly Hill have survived since the 1960's. That is a hell of a long time, and covers many severe heat waves and extreme cold. What has been the major downfall of those trees? Winter damage, rather than heat/humidity issues.

'Robusta Gheri' is listed as being the only MP tree to survive -9f, and it did so with zero damage. That is Very impressive. While we have hit the record low, it's rare, and about as cold as possible...

Again... I realize it's an uphill battle, but it's always fun to try. I was not even aware of these cultivars until today. I was reading about the cold tolerance of the MPs in Norway and stumbled upon this information.

sc77, you have resurrected your thread from last year but it seems that we are talking past each other. You continue with the idea that winter damage is the reason for the lack of MPs in eastern US. If that's the cast there should be plenty in midAtlantic and SE US, but that's not so. Search for images of MP in the snow and see plenty of examples in Argentine Patagonia, the tree is plenty winterhardy, Alpine winters in the Andes are not mild. Victorian New Englanders would have been all over that tree if it could grow there. Here we plant them and they manage for a few years but eventually succumb to root problems.

@sam_md, I guess we agree to disagree. 4 of 5 of the MP trees planted at Polly Hill have been there since 1968, nearly 50 years. Surly, if there was an issue with root rot or heat, the trees would long be gone, but they are not.

http://www.pollyhillarboretum.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2016-Living-Collections-Inventory-for-web.pdf

I have read many articles and journal entries by Polly Hill. She described how the trees would grow fantastically for many years, then a bad winter would kill them back significantly. However, her surprise was at how well the trees would recover from the damage and start growing as usual again, until the next freak winter. This is why those trees look odd, and do not appear to be 50 years old. However, Polly hill has some of the most meticulous records around, and the history of each tree can be observed.

While it is true that the MP can tolerate extreme cold for short periods of time. I have found that many of these locations only experience short bursts of cold, while the rest of their winters are fairly mild compared to MA. Take Kennewick or Carson, WA for example. Facebook users have reported that the MP trees there survived -15f. But do a side by side comparison of those locations to anywhere in 6b/7a MA and you will find our winters are much colder overall. So the trees must be able to survive prolonged periods of cold, which seems to be the problem.

Look at this comparison of WA vs. MA... I see 1 major difference, Avg. LOW

" Victorian New Englanders would have been all over that tree if it could grow there."

Exactly.

BTW Martha's Vineyard has some of the mildest summers in the eastern US*, and sandy soil to boot, so your statement "if there was an issue with root rot...the trees would long be gone" is a non sequitur. It's a known issue whenever they are grown in the (eastern US) areas where they would be fully winter hardy! Which clearly the current Polly Hill trees are not!

But by all means, if you can source those European cultivars, try them.

* and some of the mildest winters in New England, obviously. Which makes me wonder about the current state of their plants, because MV supposedly hit -10F in the last winter.

Alright gentleman... Case closed... I won't resurrect the topic again

Do contact me sc77..I may be able to source a couple of those for you..

I wasn't trying to shut anyone down (I can't speak for sam) I just wanted your expectations to be realistic. By all means if you can bring a monkey puzzle to true maturity in "New" England - not whatever is going on at Polly Hill - you will be rightly hailed a horticultural genius amongst all 200 or so people who care about such things ;-)

Feel free to update us when you've made actual progress, even with obtaining them. Miketropic, if you're able to somehow magically obtain plants in commercial trade in Europe and not in the US, contact me.

just for reference, do not bump: http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3255860/monkey-puzzle-tree

Araucaria images in snow in their native setting. Here MP is the dominant tree. High elevations like in these images have cold winters. Summer OTOH has MP growing in thin, nutrient poor, volcanic soils with sharp drainage. Trees grow achingly slow in these conditions. Can anywhere in eastern NA approximate these conditions? IDK