This tree is still rough. It was collected in the Spring of 2018 growing straight out of the side of a boulder. Three quarters of the tree is a spiraling burn scar which had some punky wood which I carved out. It also has some nice deadwood features at the base, with a little hooked fin that could overhang the pot. It’s an interesting specimen because in the area that it is from, I have never found a fir or pine that was older than 200 years. The area has never been logged so it’s pretty clear that there was a fire around 200 years ago. Since this one has a burn scar, it could be older than 200 years but based on it’s size and branch structure, I doubt it. It’s possible it was just a small sub branch of a much larger tree that got scorched. Maybe the big piece of deadwood laying below it was once the main trunk?
As usual, it had adelgids which were treated in the same way as my other lasiocarpa. A few of the main branches died off after collection as I wasn’t quite able to get the whole root ball and I may have done some damage while trying to re-upright the branches. This spring it pushed nice growth from the foliage that was left. Surprisingly, there a few buds popping up right now from some of the “dead” branches.
