Lane, you probably weren't around for the old discussions on P. e. 'Warrior'. To me one of the most amazing looking spruces, and certainly the only western US one I'd want.

Enjoy.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1867845/rain

Thanks for posting Lane.

I almost considered picking one up if I ran across one.

It sounds like the grafted varieties do well in the Midwest.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/2809524/picea-engelmannii-in-the-midwest#n=11

L Clark, I've read opinions that agree that Engelmann spruce is a very attractive spruce for the exotic areas where it will grow well, like in northern Europe for example. It won't do well here in the summer heat/humidity of central-east US, but perhaps further north/northwest from here. White spruce is another underappreciated spruce, but it cannot tolerate very much hot&humid summer conditions.

Ben—So it’s got the same issues as picea pungens in warm, humid summer areas? bummer. makes sense, though.

UBG- that is an awesome tree. ’Warrior’ clones are on the market? I’d kill for that tree

Here’s another. This one got freaking fat! But you can see the dense, upright branching that makes these trees WINNERS

Here is one that is getting bullied by a cottonwood and a birch. It doesn’t look as nice as a result of such intense competition.

Majestic, elegant form. lol

L Clark, my longleaf pine is also getting bullied by the nearby, very fast honeylocust, tho it's trying to grow fast at the top. The competition won't kill it, but its density and size will suffer.

I'm hoping that the 'upright' branching of my Picea Meyerii will look as good someday. :-)

Love spruces

For some reason 'Warrior' never seems to have entered commerce, and all the people of that era who used to post here...Dax, Edwin in Europe, etc. are gone, at least from GW/Houzz. Someone, Edwin I think, said it was hard to graft so that might be one reason why. But if he has it, it means it's at least in Europe, and sorry to say, they have a long history of much better 'cultivar stewardship' than the US...so hopefully that means it doesn't ever die out, and that it eventually graces public gardens over there. (There are several cultivars of rhodie bred in the US, that are commercially and probably horticulturally extinct in the US...but still available in Europe!)

Very handsome Norway spruce near Mt Savage, west MD.

Spidery root crown of another Norway spruce near Mt Savage.

Wow! I wonder if it is one of the older conical selections.

As with any unusual spruce, I'm reminded of 'octopus spruce'. I kept hoping a certain person knows where that is, and that eventually it was going to be introduced as a horticultural selection. I wouldn't give two you-know-whats if someone wants to patent it. Fine. Do what you have to do to introduce it! (cf https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1615403/are-patented-plants-ruining-horticulture and more heated argument w/brandon https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4219017/opinion-on-patents - as always, please don't bump unless absolutely necessary!) But other than me, it seems to have been forgotten!

If I were one of those pesky billionaires, I would post the picture of it on social media and start a bounty program for it! Seriously, though, it tells you a lot about American incuriousness re: horticulture that it hasn't been selected yet! If I *EVER* spotted something like driving around, I'd almost have an accident before pulling over to take a lot of pictures of it. But, obviously, most people don't have my plant sensibilities.

Actually, now that I think about what I posted here, 5 years ago...

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5950608/all-time-alluring-plants-on-gardenweb-post-yours

I'm not sure if Octopus Spruce was ever posted by anyone else on GW. Surely back in the day of Resin, Robert Lanner aka pinetree30, Edwin the dutch nurseryman...etc...participating, a huge discussion about it would have erupted?! So, probably someone posted something else via photobucket in 2008 (back before...maybe 2014? GW had no photo hosting of its own, so you had to use a third party) and I looked at the URL to get back to their cache of photobucket pics (or, rather, the internet archive of it). The octo spruce was among those pictures of various unusual conifers, along with one of a young guy (early 20s probably) posing in a swamp with a pond cypress. He might be the one I somehow later found out was deceased...via someone else on this forum...who I can't even remember now! (It wasn't willows who informed me of that...I've never direct messaged him...but willows seemed to know something of the origins of the octospruce, as seen in the circa 2016 post. I could never recover the 'original' 2012 post I made when I first discovered the pic. Now that I think about it, it had to be in direct message exchanges prompted by the 2012 posting, where someone tipped me off that one of the discoverers of the octopus spruce, perhaps the young guy in one of the pictures, being deceased. There's no other way I would have known that, since there were no names attached to the photobucket account.)

So...alas, it looks like, short of me becoming a billionaire, Octospruce will remain shrouded in mystery!

So that you don't have to click through a couple old threads, here is the octospruce pic.

Since I've recently become preoccupied with understanding the construct of marketing (for other reasons in my life)...I think 'poodle spruce' might be a more marketable name!

Ben - That is the most perfect, beautiful spruce I've ever seen. Incredible. How tall is it? Got to be over 100'

UBG-that octopus tree is remarkable. I wonder what a young octotree would look like. Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't it take an absurd amount of time to put a new plant, especially a landscape tree, onto market for a reason? Seems like there would be a lot that goes into testing the product (tree). Grafted vs non grafted, best performing root stock, then they have to let some of them grow to maturity to make sure everything goes as planned with the mature trees, like maybe they are poor performing in some unforeseen way like they need a certain soil type to thrive, or poor form and brittle branches, or a narrower climatic requirement for them to exhibit the unique characteristics that they were chosen for in the first place? Wouldn't want to flood the market with with an inferior product and kill your brand. IDK, I'm just thinking about that process for the first time ,honestly.

I don't know UBG, I'm beginning to have my doubts.

I would think if such a large sized tree like the octo-spruce existed, by now someone would've come up with something about it.

It's just too remarkable for anyone encountering it, to not post something on the www, especially with cameras being so available and widespread.

It could be a product of early Artificial Intelligence unless a date for the picture could be found to pre-date AI.

And I've run this picture through several Plant id programs. Some of which have returned remarkably accurate results for me, using it for other plants.

The one tree, that comes up with the highest percentage, every time, is Picea Abies but again, how has this tree never been spotted by all the millions of people around the world that have phone cams and the internet?

Beng,

That is a remarkable P. abies.

So columnar, it must be because it had some competition growing up, don't you think?

Anyways, thanks for posting.

"I would think if such a large sized tree like the octo-spruce existed, by now someone would've come up with something about it."

Sorry Bill I think there are too many counterfactuals. You are letting your own comparatively refined understanding of plants cloud your perception. To most Americans at least, there are just various 'green blobs': 'green blobs that lose their leaves', 'green blobs that don't', 'green blobs that have shiny colored things' (flowers!), and 'green stuff you walk on' - lawns. Ok, I'm simplifying, and being sarcastic and maybe a little cruel. The average understanding might just be a notch higher than that, but only _one_ notch. Because I feel like I've read plenty of accounts of some horticulturalist or plant lover 'discovering' an unusual plant of some sort, that had potentially interacted and been observed by scores, of not hundreds, of other humans before the point of discovery. And it wasn't noteworthy to any of those prior observers. Consider 'Warrior' spruce...do you not think hundreds of others had hiked past it, before a conifer collector noticed it?

The hilarious thing is the AI actually proves my point. AI is just trained on the corpus of data about how [most] human minds work. AI can easily recognize it as a Picea abies, but doesn't note the distinctness of it. This literally proves that most John Does/Joe Punters* wouldn't recognize it as anything notable!

"how has this tree never been spotted by all the millions of people around the world" - this is actually very germaine though. Sorry to sound classest, but in one of the prior threads, willows said he thought this tree was in a blue collar suburb outside Pittsburgh. Not millions of people seeing it, even if it is a once in a million mutation, which it probably is. Just a few hundred probably, whose lives are occupied by sundry other concerns, and who are not worldly enough to have spent much time thinking about the arcane topic of "Picea abies branch structure". I thought of a funny related anecdote: I was discussing my larch trees with my former, old-timey tree guy who is now retired. This was probably around 2018. He said he recognized it, but "only because he knew of one in Conowingo" (I think, just guessing - it was somewhere up near the Mason-Dixon line, as you'd expect)...and that the old lady who owned it "had to keep telling tree services it wasn't dead and didn't need to be removed". So, even for tree contractors in this podunk part of Maryland, many of them didn't recognize a larch tree, and thought it was a dying pine!

Lane - yes, in theory this would be a little harder to commercialize...but...I would just sell it as "a cutting of the poodle spruce - find out in 30 years if it develops the poodled** branches!" And I think people would buy it for that reason! After all it's not unusual at all for PNW collector's nurseries to market something along these lines, "we can only get seedlings of this special version of this plant right now...most of the offspring show the same trait, but we can't guarantee that they will".

* - well, maybe Joe Punters would, because England, but the tree isn't in England!

** - was just joking with a friend about how we can turn anything into verb in American English. I have no shame about 'to poodle something'. LOL.

Back to Warrior for a moment, Dax said 13 years ago that a "large nursery chain" was working on 'Warrior'. (does anyone know what happened to him...did he just stop posting here, hopefully? Or depart the mortal coil?)

Here were the likely suspects I thought of at the time:

Iseli

Buchholz

Stanley (retired and sold to someone else)

Was there any other major PNW/west coast conifer grafter? I'm probably forgetting or am unaware of some minor ones. There were, or are, some small scale midwestern operations. Could Dax have meant one of them? Or did he mean someone really major, like Monrovia? That seems unlikely to me.

At any rate, hopefully one or more of these are still 'working on it'.

I only recently found out that Mr Maple of North Carolina bought Buchholz of Oregon a couple years ago. Holy moly, will I have a lot to say about that. I'm planning a year end 'state of American horticulture' post. See you at year end LOL.

@Bill -- I don't think so from competition because it's fully open on the side facing the pic. Norway spruces seem to have alot of genetic variability and so various forms occur.

@David/UBG -- 'state of American horticulture'. We're counting on you not to sugar-coat it. I guess I was fortunate to get one of OIKOS treecrops' hybrid 90%+ F4 American chestnuts before they pretty much went out of business.

^___ Yes, please do UBG. Looking forward to it.

Thanks, beng.

I've a good start on my 30"/3 gal. potted P. abies specimen (planted May 2023) now over 6ft. tall.

Tall and narrow would be good.

L Clark, my guess is that columnar spruce is just under 100 ft in that pic. That was taken prb'ly 20 yrs ago, so certainly over 100 ft now. There's a Norway spruce that's very close to the spidery-rooted spruce I show above, and it's wide & elegant even w/a fair amount of competition. Sister-in-law for scale.

A Norway spruce very densely branched near Hagerstown, MD.

Lane, P. abies (Norway spruce) has a ph preference range of 5.0 to 7.5.

It might be a candidate for your area but maybe you already thought of that one. ;-)

Zero experience with Engelmann spruce myself, but I have noticed it in the inventories of a few of the larger wholesalers in the region. A couple of them list 'Bush's Lace', and at least one lists 'Jasper'. Gee Farms' availability (Feb 2025) has 'Bush's Lace', 'Blue Softie', 'Fritsche', 'Hoodie', 'M&Em', and 'New Jersey'. Conifer treasury of the World lists over 160 varieties! As beng noted above, and per the Missouri Botanical Garden, the species generally doesn't perform very well in the central and eastern US, due to summer heat and humidity. MBG also mentions that it dislikes heavy clay.

UBG, it looks like Dax last posted on Houzz in the summer of 2018. Per a quick online search, it appears he's still at his location in IL. tsugajunkie may know more. Dax posted this photo of 'Blue Angel' in "Hello Everyone Liking Conifers" in 2018:

outback63 posted a pic of Bush's Lace in "Picea engelmannii Bush's Lace" in 2015:

ben- those are epic trees. wow

bill- I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a picea abies. If I have I was not aware enough to recognize it. They look awesome.

arbordave- are any of the engelmanns you listed large-growing cultivars?

Another engelman with two other blue spruces. quite the contrast in form

I'm always amazed the now ancient Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh multisite search is still running, but thankfully it is.

https://websites.rbge.org.uk/multisite/multisite3.php?first=Sir%20Harold%20Hillier%20Gardens

(But I know for sure the data there is quite 'stale', maybe by as much as 10 years.)

If you select "All US Sites" and "engelmannii" you will see that there are supposedly plenty on the US east coast or midwest. With the Holden, for example, apparently having some back to 1955! I'd disregard the 6 in North Carolina - that place seems to have the money to buy every arborescent plant offered by every mail order nursery in the country and try it.*

The fact it has a wider native range than Colorado Blue Spruce makes me suspect it is at least as adoptable as that species. This is a pattern I've stumbled upon from studying the adoptability of hundreds of exotic plants from places like South Africa and China. A big native range can often be a clue as to garden adaptability even if the climates are different. Yes, it's from a more northerly, perhaps somewhat cooler area, but not in a way that should be a huge difference. The question would be more rather it's the root system or the foliage that going to have a major problem in the east, if the former, it could of course be grafted on Norway Spruce. That's what I would have hoped for to get a Dr. Seussian looking 'Warrior'.

L Clark - I believe Blue Angel, Bush's Lace, and Fritsche all have the potential to grow large. Iseli Nursery has info cards on Bush's Lace and Fritsche.

One of the local retailers has carried Picea abies 'Paul's Select' for the last few years. It looks like a good option for those wanting a larger growing, disease resistant "blue" spruce.

'David, and you are a Dave...but I don't mind being called Dave by most people.'

but, but, but... Dave or david... the difference is how I've always determined who the poster it is talking too. 🫤

LClark,

Okay, Engelmann spruce is back on my radar for possible purchase, next spring.

:-)

Never heard of 'Paul's Select' arbordave. Interesting to know about. I'd say I don't really like glaucous conifers, but I have a few. I have a leutneggeri Abies just because the smell of the foliage is absolutely incredible, but it will be many years until it's big enough that I can cut branchlets and bring them inside in winter to steep in hot water. (Used to do it with a crock pot, but much smarter to use an automatic rice maker with the top off. Because it stops when the water boils off. Fills the house with fir fragrance. Only my A. recurvata is big enough for this, now. I only do it when it's really cold and the air needs extra humidity.)

If only the eastern nursery industry would start offering that, and abandon CBSes!

I was just going through my NCSU pics to find one for the other thread, I spotted this travesty. Ugliest tree in the entire garden. Why don't they get rid of it!

Dave or david... the difference is how I've always determined who the poster it is talking too.

Yes, I meant by the first part of what I said, that it's good we are a Dave and a David, instead of two guys vying for the same name around here!

Duh, david, yeah, I guess I need to read some things twice, so it sinks in. ;-)

David/UBG -- you can call me Dave, or you can call me David, but you doesn't has to call me UBG.

https://youtu.be/MqwUCiAjxTw

LClark, this one is getting closer to your area.

The bluest spruce that I've grown, so far, is the Black Hills Spruce (Picea densata).

This is maybe because it's so young, but white spruce (P. glauca) in general, has a tendency to have silvery blue new growth that darkens to more of a blue/green in the late season.

P. Glauca 'densata' Black Hills spruce.

Planted 4-30-25, picture taken about 5 weeks in the ground (6-6-2025) new growth.

Picture taken middle of July 2025.

Another picture from middle of August.

Still looking like above last I looked in October. :-)

eta: supposedly a bit more 'dry' tolerant than straight white spruce (p. glauca).

Also, it is moderately salt tolerant and ph levels in its native range average 6.0 to 7.5

Looking good, Bill!

I'm rather honored when I see david put a 'Like' on a post of mine that features a blue(ish) conifer, because I know how he feels about them and that he has many, many, more worthy plants that can be grown at his place. 😁

But alas, conifers are something that grows very here and tolerate the summer dryness better than most (some pines give you the aura of being a type of cactus). 🌵

I dislike the garish powder blues seen (the landscape industry and therefore many recent planting are exactly that -- an eyesore), but the gentle aqua blue-greens are endearing.

Yeah, I'm already pushing the limits here on some of my trees/shrubs, so I'll be looking more intently on zone hardiness of the plant before I buy myself more work winter protecting plants.

Next season, I may have to start 'letting go'.

Since the topic came up again, here's my take on glaucous conifers.

On the east coast we certainly have no natural fully glaucous one.* I've taken the Amtrak Zephyr through Colorado. CBSes look great - IN THEIR NATURAL SETTING. They don't look 'right' when plopped in a typical suburban eastern/midwestern yard surrounded by, ohhhh, I dunno, PG hydrangeas. (Can you imagine how ridiculously a PG hydrangea would look in the high rockies next to a CBS?!) So I'd actually be OK with a CBS in the east if it were part of a plant collection that was trying to replicate the look of the intermountain west. Of course it doesn't help that at least in my part of the eastern US, 99% of CBSes will eventually look like absolute hell from branch die back.

They might even look better in the PNW, blending in better w/their looming Douglas Firs, but IIRC, even there, gardengal has said they have disease problems.

A lesser version of this complaint is Trachycarpus fan palms. Once you've seen 1) pictures of them in their native habitats and 2) lush maritime gardens that replicate the look of that habitat https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-trebah-garden-falmouth-cornwall-uk-chusan-palms-trachycarpus-fortunei-73879912.html

There's no going back. They will always look stupid to you planted in say, sandy soil in a hot dry hell strip in Virginia Beach with yuccas and oleanders. I'm actually really glad pindo palms seem to be 'winning the Virginia Beach palm wars' (har har har) because they often look both more natural, and healthier, in those kind of settings. I'll talk about VA Beach palms more when I do my next trip report.

* a few years ago I would have said we have none at all other than some individuals of the...let's be honest...almost always ugly Juniperus virginianas. But I now have a very smart looking Chamaecyparis thyoides from McLean Nurseries in Baltimore, that Bill Kuhl grew from local Maryland seed. (I was actually Mr. McLean who planted a grove at the nursery, from eastern shore MD seed, and Bill gets the cuttings from those plants!) It's that kind of mild sea-green that Ben mentioned. Being the completist I am, I also have the fully green, less thread needled form of the Atlantic White Cedar, which I got from Ken at the old Oikos nursery. The TSO entry, oddly, doesn't discuss the fact there are two forms known...maybe conifers.org does? I'll have to check on that. )

Edit: I thought the forms I have were subspecies, but now I think not. McLean's is just a naturally occurring 'Glauca', and the Oikos one, from Massachusetts I think, is the typical green form.