"Anyone growing it in zone 6?"

Per your own link, this plant "is known to be growing in zone 6 on Cape Cod in Massachusetts with no winter problems." A lot may depend on the microclimate in which the plant is located. Also, with climate zones shifting lately, if you are in the USDA zone 7a, your actual conditions may be closer to 7b or even very low 8a, now.

I'm going to bump this to do a preliminary damage report from my own garden. The freeze isn't even over, and its already worse than last year.

I've had Ilex 'Scepter' for quite a while now. It suffered a major set back years ago when deer chomped it to the ground, but didn't really eat it. Damn antlered rats. I guess like a tootsie pop, they thought they'd eventually get to the good part. Anyhow it was recovering, but, maybe because of where it was, in too much summer shade, was never very vigorous. Anyhow the leaves have a pale green/brownish cast in the past few days that got worse, not better today, indicative that the thaw "finished off" the cryo-cooking process, rather than revive them. I think it should only be rated as zn 7 for permanent landscape use. Clearly, it couldn't withstand such damage winter after winter. Last winter it showed less damage.

Ilex 'Sand Pond' from Woodlanders is also stressed but not as badly. That was a natural hybrid discovered in coastal SC, so nothing too surprising there.

Ilex 'James G. Esson' looks totally undamaged, proving it to be a very hardy I. X altaclarensis. IMHO it is the best looking holly in the entire Rutgers collection...but then, I like a European looking holly, the plurality of their plants are I. opaca cultivars.

Koehne hollies are fine, there are a bunch at Rutgers which isn't a particularly mild part of NNJ.

Mahonia X media F2 seedling from Camforest: very little damage last winter. This winter: obvious foliar injury, though I suspect the stems will still be OK. It's been very vigorous, growing from a little seedling to over 5' in only 5-6 years. One possible difference is it wasn't blooming at all last year, because we were colder in the late fall and early winter. I suppose flowering is in some sense a form of active growth for it and thus it couldn't protect itself from cold as well.

Camellias: most look OK. 'Aida' I can't be sure yet, but the damage so far looks no worse than last year. 'Destiny' also has foliar stress on the tops of the plant, and of course the buds were killed. It's the only traditional, non-hardiness selected C. japonica I have. 'Mason Farm' is obviously laughing this freeze off. All my Camellias but 'Korean Fire' get morning shade. KF looks a bit stressed but nothing it can't handle.

Magnolia skinneriana: severely damaged, and plant on life support because last winter about 2/3 of the top was killed off. Supposedly the hardiest ex-Michelia, but not very hardy.

The 3 cultivars of Sequoia I have are a little bright spot: they seem slightly less injured than they were at this point last winter. But, it took time for it all to appear and the same could be true this year.

Abies delavayi seedlings: absolutely fine. It's clearly at least solidly zn 7 hardy, I wouldn't hesitate to test the same batch in zn 6. They came from Arboretum on the Blue Hill/Treehaven. I wonder if he's testing them outside there, they could make a good fir for WNY as the only possible issue with them is a couple start growing a bit early in spring. But their springs near the Great Lakes are consistent.

The only obviously injured rhododendron so far is 'Gibraltar' - no, not the common azalea but an old European hybrid that I feared might be tender. (It's 'Bibiani' X elliotti; other elliotti hybrids are OK. 'Bibiani' grows in the suburbs of Atlanta so is hardier than widely assumed. Also, the plant was small and not even in the ground for a year.) As for anything else, it's too early to say. I covered a few things in huge mounds of snow before the big freeze last week to protect them.

In Baltimore, we are on track for this to be the 3rd coldest February since 1870.

Thanks for the update. I think it's too early to call on a lot of my BLE marginals.

I think all the hollies (including Scepter) look OK. 'Scepter' looks zone 7 hardy to me. 'Virginia' which looks similar, is just a tad more tender. HOWEVER, stress from cold last winter seems to have made many hollies (not to mention camellias) more susceptible to tea camellia scale. Not good.

Frostproof gardenia recovered a bit and put out some growth last summer, but it seems to be all dead again. There doesn't seem to be a zone 7a gardenia. I suppose I could have covered it.

Red Bay will have a hard time recovering after this winter.

Too early to tell on Q. myrsinifolia and phillyreoides. Q. virginias may just defoliate this season. I hope buds on all oaks are not damaged. This sets them way back. They leaf out later and then seem not as hardy going into Fall.

I threw large pots over several 'marginals'. So won't know how they look until I uncover them -- V. tinus, Q. acuta, Q. ilex, Raphiolepis, newly planted Sarcococca confusa, etc. Maybe the snow will insulate them well.

Needle palms look good.

Dave - thanks for your update. Just to clarify - are you saying you _have_ a 'Scepter' and it appears undamaged? I can imagine it showing slightly more damage here. The areas that are on a hill near the upper Bay have very windy microclimates. It's really one of the only places in the mid-Atlantic where areas of moderate elevation (up to 400') are juxtaposed with a vast expanse of open water. Or ice these days!

David,

I do have a 'Scepter' and it's about 5 feet high. Not huge, but I have seen NO damage on it the last two years. Now it's in sort of a wind shadow from my house, but not up against the house.

However, the Ilex x 'Virginia' got some bronzing and a few dried leaves after the winter of 13/14. It looks OK so far this year. We haven't gotten quite as cold (or as often) as last winter (yet).

So I would rate 'Scepter' maybe a half zone hardier than 'Virginia'. (I would have a hard time telling them apart just by looking at them). Both hybrids have Ilex integra in them.

All my Ilex koehneanas look great! Gotta love them for putting up with all this cold and snow.

Thanks, I had not heard of 'Virginia'. I still plan to keep 'Scepter'. No point in judging based on this winter (hopefully!) and it's a great looking holly, particularly if you don't want spines. What was your low last winter versus this? For me it was 3F several times last winter - yes spread over a slightly longer period. This winter it's been 1F, also more than once. I saw that Dulles got to -4F recently but you are in Vienna right? Probably not nearly as cold.

(I found the other thread show I. X 'Virginia' to be an I. integra hybrid with I. aquifolium instead of I. X altaclarensis. Makes sense that it's less hardy, as [somewhat paradoxically] most I. aquifolium are not as hardy as I. X altaclarensis.)

I'm in Annandale. While I do not really keep records of the cold, during the 13/14 winter I believe we got down to 0 degrees numerous times. Perhaps at least for 3 or 4 cold events and earlier in the winter than this one (so longer duration).

This winter maybe only down to 9 degrees.

As you know, the daytime highs, number of 'warmups' and amount of dessicating winds throughout the winter also play a huge role in damage and survivability. One could almost argue that we were nearly a zone 8 this winter. But I've lived in a zone 8 before and this winter was NO ZONE 8!

I think 'Scepter' is superior to 'Virginia'. 'Virginia' is only offered by a few nurseries. And it's only propagated by one nursery (in one of the Carolinas, I think). 'Scepter' was created at the National Arboretum and is patent-free, so can be propagated easily by anyone. Although not many are.

That's interesting. I won't ask you to post the nearest wunderground station because they are dense on the ground in the megasuburbs of NoVA, but the morning of a couple of the freezes I looked at various wunderground and mesonet stations in DC & Balto. and had no idea any of them stayed as high as 9F. I would say you are lucky indeed. Even at National, the monthly low was 5F. At official station MVA047, just south of the biggest chunk of asphalt between Miami and NYC (Virginia's '21 lane salute', as the Post memorably put it, the Springfield "mixing bowl") it was 6F.
It would be cool if wundermap had some kind of "advanced analytics" that would draw contour lines through the 0F, 5F, and 10F temp. boundaries after this winter. Of course, the meaning of that is limited by the individual circumstances of a given winter. For some reason in this winter season, the upper portion of all 3 Virginia peninsulas, all the way down to those towns just west of Williamsburg, VA, had very very cold readings. Many near -5F and a few to -10F! Likewise, Ocean City, MD, airport hit -6F! (just a mile away at the real shore, it was probably warmer) Would we conclude from this winter then that Annandale, VA has "milder" winters than Ocean City? Of course not!

This is a "method to the madness" as they say. It appears where you don't want to be is: 1) rural - the heat island of even suburban development is clearly evident 2) flat, or even worse in a slight hollow in a flat area, as some of those VA Peninsular stations are, 3) having heavy, fresh snow cover on the ground and 4) too far away from water. Any of the stations that were right on a river or the bay were OK and stayed above 0F, as were most of the ones right on the tips of the landforms. As long as ice is still forming, it is giving off some heat. In my case I'm probably just close enough to water to be influenced by it, but this winter the upper and middle bays froze, for the first time since 1994. But, I'm at over 100 ft of elevation on sloping land so the cold air had somewhere to drain, and I never went below 0F, even with snow on the ground.

Yeah, we may have gotten colder. I just look outside at my outdoor thermometer around 6:30 in the morning and assume that's it. But we may have been colder.

Dave - you might find this useful:
http://goo.gl/gaR5F1
You can look at it any time in the following day. And, because it's mesonet, they are official stations and not subject to the crazy uncertainty that sometimes plagues wunderground. A few of the wunderground stations during this winter show lows of 65F...in PA or VA. As if someone was so airheaded, they thought the station could read the outside temperature from inside their house!

Anyone have any idea where I can purchase an Ilex Scepter? I am in Philadelphia but can't seem to find a local or mail order source. I need some large SPINELESS hollies for screening and Scepter looks like a beauty.

Scepter can be had at McLean Nurseries near Baltimore. Unfortunately they do not have a website. I would give them a call. Nice folks with some interesting and unusual hollies.

They have other hollies that might be a bit hardier, and also spineless. Though I think Scepter would be hardy in a normal winter in Philly, we don't seem to be having those recently ;-) But yes, they are definitely the ones to call, and then take a day trip down to Balto.

Any idea whether they have 'Proud Mary'?

Not but just looked it up on the web and looks very interesting. Another variety to add to my quest. Thanks!

Couple things worth bumping this for:
The new URL to see 24h min temperature is this:

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?&zoom=12&center=39.46879995920132,-76.18812561035156&basemap=OpenStreetMap&boundaries=true,false&hazard=true&hazard_type=hi-all&hazard_opacity=60&obs=true&obs_type=weather&elements=temp,wind,gust&obs_popup=false&obs_density=10

Although you still have to use the controls at left to set that as the criteria; unlike the old one the controls don't seem to generate a new URL for every data request. (may depend on browser) You can of course bookmark a different URL with coordinates closer to your area.

And...last week I swung by McLean Nursery on the way to a Dr.'s appointment. Mr. Kuhl was in the middle of operating his old farm tractor but we spoke for a couple minutes...I was in a hurry anyhow. He said his 'Scepter' was undamaged, and that the reason mine was so injured might have been not being well established. I know his part of Baltimore had similar lows to mine, and has to be pretty windy as well since it's on a hill. (the nursery is on Satyr Hill Rd. after all)

Thanks David. I stopped by McLean Nursery this week while on a business trip. They had a lot of greenhouse overwintering losses from the cold winter. They didn't have any Scepter available but spoke highly of the variety for my needs. I did end up buying a Winter Bounty at Valley View Garden Center however. I hope it does well.

Thanks

I really like Winter Bounty and have two of them. One I put in last summer and one this spring. Last year's plant did OK over the winter, but rabbits seem to love it. So now i have to put netting around it every winter, I guess.

I had not heard of Winter Bounty, I don't think it's in the holly book I have.
I. ciliospinosa cultivars seem to have bountiful berries - so I guess it's a particularly fitting name lol.

And, before this thread rolls off into oblivion, interesting to note that all of my camellias did bloom this year. Overall, it's hard to say with certainty which winter was worse. Let's hope we don't have a 3rd run at a record winter: if the short-range forecast in 9 months is for a repeat performance, I'm just going to DIG UP any newly planted tender plants outside, and bring them in!