They seem ok in the northeastern US north of the Mason-Dixon. I'm pretty sure I've seen them at the Arnold Arboretum and somewhere on Long Island, maybe the Planting Fields Arboretum.

https://plantexplorer.longwoodgardens.org/weboi/oecgi2.exe/INET_ECM_DispPl?NAMENUM=16718&DETAIL=1&startpage=1

I've seen very healthy ones in Edmonton, Alberta...200 miles east of the Rockies. Also very healthy ones in southern Ontario (Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, etc.). Unfortunately, Swiss Needle Cast disease is becoming prevalent in Ontario and many healthy Douglas Firs are losing a lot of needles or dying outright.

My opinion is they grow well (better) the further north in the midwest they are. A shorter and cooler summer coupled with a shorter growing season should put less stress on them. This is purely speculative, however, I know humidity when coupled with higher temps plays afoul.

Dax

They are growing in the Chisos Mts. of Big Bend National Park in Texas at elevations from 6,400' to ~ 7,200'. These trees are between 30-50' tall. Shorter height is probably due to the lack of rainfall.

We see a decent amount of them in old windbreaks or property barriers in Eastern Iowa. Moreso in town or on the edge of a town than out on a farm. Actually they do alright except that they never really attain that "dense evergreen look" that is ideal. A client of mine has a big row of them that must have been planted at least 50 years ago- they've done well on a site that is pure sand and they've gone through several major droughts. The other row right nearby me was hacked to bits by a tree trimming crew but is still hanging in there. I always wondered if the DNR used to recommend the species and provided it through the state forest nursery.

They suffer here -- almost as bad as blue spruce, with a rare exception here or there.

From what beng? Something that disfigures the needles? As near to me as the town of Parkesburg, PA, there's a juvenile one (about 30' high) that has always looked good, other than having the ubiquitous forking leaders. Next time I'm up there I'll take a closer look to see if I see any pathogens.

the wonders of google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/UaANadZbqs12

Douglasfir is not commonly seen around here, but the few I've witnessed looked OK. I haven't seen any large ones, but that is probably due more to a lack of public familiarity than cultural issues. I think they're more tolerant in general than Tsuga canadensis, so if that grows well for you in NE Wisconsin, I think it would be worth the effort to give it a try. Full sun, moisture retentive soil with good drainage, and some protection from winds would be the ticket. Surely you can provide that. :)

But that's menziesii var. menziesii ;-) (not part of the original question posed:)

Dax

Yeah, Dax, but isn't it a nice tree where it can be grown? It really adds height to the forest. To me, the inland variety isn't near as good looking. Each has it's attributes though.

It would be nice if you could grow some, +om.

Here's some out my back door, looking NE.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i283/Botann/IMG_0512.jpg

Mike, ducking out of the rain.

That's impressive. And a nice trail to boot.

I removed the lower branches on those Doug Firs when I was much younger. I don't climb anymore.

As I'm filling up my garden with plants, it's getting more and more about the trails instead of the lawn. Between most of the trails are 'islands', and some of the trails are tree covered canals on a island. If I think that way for designing it's easier to place the plants. I call it 'Intelligent Design'. ;-)

Mike

I had a climbing crew come out this fall and do some pruning. The native Red Oaks here (Q. Ellipsoidalis) are notorious for having large old branches die off for no apparent reason, and there's always plenty of work for them. A very skilled bunch of young men enjoyed a beautiful fall day climbing around the canopy of a 70' oak. Not a bad way to make a living. Haw old were you when you stopped climbing?

Yes, Britain and the PNW have awesome Doug firs/trees :-)

Dax

Thanks fellows. I knew about the British Isles stuff-and the fact these would be the coastal variant. Other submissions fall about where I'd expect-some good, some so-so. In my town, there are some that have made themselves into pretty nice trees. Others look like a soil issue or something is holding them back. They look like they will never amount to anything. We're circum-neutral clay loam around here and that's likely not helpful. But around here is not where I would be planting them. That would be up at my land, where soils are sandier, air is (often) cooler, and at least the upper part of my property is high and well-drained. We shall see.

davidrt28, AFAIK, the same needlecast infections that affect blue spruce. In fact, saw several middle-age ones just this weekend that were suffering. Granted, it's generally not as bad as blue spruce.

Most of my climbing days were when I was in my 30s and 40s. I was about 60 when I quit because my legs weren't as strong or as durable. I'm 72 now.

Mike

In truth, I was hoping-against my own better judgement-that one of you would say something like -"yeah, in Lower Michigan they grow like weeds" or some equally preposterous outburst! I already know the deal.....just looking for confirmation I guess. I think maybe next year will be the year to plant a few up there. I have to pace myself, with the sad realization that there are other aspects of life to be attended to! For this spring, just 25 bigtooth aspen and 25 paper birch.......that's kind of a picnic scenario. No more weekends where we need to get another 6000 planted by Sunday afternoon.....that kind of thing. It's all gravy from here on out.

I'm sure I'll continue to move young white cedars around for as long as I can move around myself. But those are coming from the land itself, not from an outside source, so that's different!

That has to be a great accomplishment to look at. I can see it. I see it as a mixed planting vs. blocks of species . . . am I correct?

Dax

Every single one I've tried died and I've tried a half dozen or so. Some took 7-8 years to succumb with slow declining every year. There was one at the Boerner Botanical Gardens that was looking horrible circa 2000 but when I saw it again around 2008 it was recovering. I haven't seen it recently to see how it is doing.

tj

Dax, it's a little of both. Sometimes, due to things having nothing to do with how we would have wanted it, or designed it if you will, things got block-planted. Then other times, we had all the species on hand and could mix them up. So...a lot of the hybrid larch are in big blocks-just the way it went. But that's actually turning out to be a good thing, since these things grow so crazy fast, not even the white pine or Norway spruce keep up with them. So in that sense, it's a boon to have them in their own groupings. We had those trees on hand before the pines and spruces that weekend two years ago when we did the big 6000 planting. But as I said, it's tending to work out. The "cedar" are being placed in groupings, but all around the acreage, so they will mix and match with all the others. Interestingly on that one, the areas where we dig them up for transplant tend to be swampy wet. Yet that same plant, lifted out of the wet soil and planted on regular upland, well-drained stuff, take off as if nothing happened. Interesting trees-you really can't kill them it seems.

Thanks TJ. Wonder what the deal is? I have noted that the same Phomopsis crap that's screwing up the western spruces etc. can develop on Pseudotsuga. So that's certainly a concern.

They are doing quite a lot of research and trial on doug fir for timber plantation in scandinavia now when the climate are getting warmer, wetter and windier. Grows up to 50% faster than norway spruce in warmer areas, but are vulnerable to spring frost when young. They found out that provenance is more important for this species than many other.

No doubt Hug, especially considering there is the coastal type and the inland type. Lots of genes to play with!

Hey, I'm all about protecting intact native plant communities. We call them woods! But I'm also very interested in what happens when you take a tree from one part of the world and move it to somewhere else. Recent findings with one of the western N. american conifers-can't remember which one now-showed it doing MUCH better Planted somewhere in Europe than at home. To give a simple version, it seems that over time-we're talking lots of time-soil-born pathogens can build up in a given locale and start to diminish the ability of a given tree type to manage the soil micro-environment. Take that same tree and place it where it's never been.....but where there are suitable mycorrhizal associates in the soil...and it will actually grow better than it did "at home". Later, or tomorrow or something, if I can I'll dig that up. It was interesting.

Maybe the Monterey cypress?

No, it was lodgepole pine, and it did better in some Scandinavian area than in its home range in BC. I remembered that much just now. Will still link it up if I stumble across the article. But it does go to show you that despite some things you will always read about "native plants do better because blah blah blah." those are mostly simplistic statements and don't reflect the true complexity of life and interrelationships of different lifeforms on this planet.

Oh yeah, the "contorta". Very extensively planted in the north, 1,5 million acres by now.

Yup, that was it. Mycorrhizae in that soil turned out to be ideal for this species to work with. Again, just shows how complex this stuff can be. I'm all about conserving intact native plant communities, yet I get extremely tired of reading the usual boilerplate about how "native plants are already adapted to again...blah blah blah, as if there hasn't been extreme disturbance to almost all of our soils in at least the urban locations where most of our work happens. What native conditions?

Likewise with those magnificent photos Resin shows us from time to time, depicting truly marvelous growth of some western N. American conifer species in northern England. No way those plants "are not adapted" to those conditions. Honesty must be a part of such discussions, yet rarely is.

When they first started planting lodgepole pine in big scale in the 1960s, they argued that fire was needed for it to reproduce. Well, maybe to reproduce in full scale, but they do spread occasionally even witout fire and are now found in the wild every now and then. But I can't really get upset about it, since scots pine and norway spruce make up 80% of all trees here. A little more diversity is just appreciated, as long as the newcomer prefers upland sites like the lodgepole pine does. I would love to see douglas fir in the mix as well, as long as it's a minor component. As you say, there are almost no truly undisturbed forests left anyway.

Right. If this was a completely virgin situation, I'd argue as loud as anyone not to willy-nilly plant some foreigner. But as you say, these are not pristine places. What's more, and this is just my personal belief, although I share it with a handful of other weirdos, in the world that's coming-lots of native species being decimated by this or that imported pest insect, disease, mite, you name it....I truly believe we're going to have to get creative about purposely introducing species into "new" areas. I can't fully unpack this idea here, but I do believe there's merit. I don't think Pinus contorta is going to be the undoing of nature in Sweden. Hell, when you look at the rapacious clearing of land going on all over the globe, both to grow more corn and soybeans, and so as to enable more malls to be built, I can envision a future where any "wild" plant anywhere is going to have "value". It's a new time we're entering here folks. Might be time for some of the "natives only all the time" folks to get off their high horses.

There's one at UNH in Durham, NH. It's been there a while and looked quite healthy last time I took a good look at it. It isn't ancient, but has been there a number of years.

I've read that Torrey pine grows much better outside its original range -- in the proper climate.

There are N. American pine species naturalizing in the vicinity of South American pine plantations. If these runaway pines are really and truly crowding out some native plant community, then I agree with those throwing their hands up in the air about this tragedy. But if they're simply colonizing land that long ago was cleared for agriculture, probably holds few to no native plants, etc......what's the harm? I don't expect all to agree with me on this-I also don't think it a great tragedy that a few Scots pines or Norway spruce have naturalized somewhere-but in my hierarchy of things to worry about, it's the obvious bad actors-things like common buckthorn, which really can destroy a woods, that i believe we should be concentrating on.

Sometimes you'll read some Wild Ones pamphlet or something where somebody's all up in arms because some tawny orange daylilies are growing in the ditch somewhere. I want to grab them by the collar and shake vigorously. Daylilies in the ditch will not be the end of nature as we know it!

At the end of the day, it is novel ecosystems that are being created. They're surely not all good, but they're just as surely not all bad. And this is not a new thing. American Indians, for one example, have been moving plants around for millenia. Why that gets a pass, but not some more recent effort to get something growing where it was not previously I don't know.

I've read almost 50% of the field weeds (not trees/shrubs) in many areas of eastern NA are exotic, brought by the first European settlers. No "disaster" has occurred because of this. In fact, resulted in more diversity, in general.

Now that you mention it, beng, my weed books list a large majority of weeds that were introduced.

Mike

Oh for sure-any untended place like a field that isn't farmed anymore will be mostly non-native stuff. I think it's a mixed picture in terms of ultimate impact, and really goes species by species. There are some that I just don't personally think it makes sense to get in a lather about. Even something like dame's rocket, where I see it, if it wasn't that it would just be some more burdock, garlic mustard, box elder saplings...that sort of thing. In other words, I don't see it competing with high-value species in high-value sites....just the opposite.