PalmsNorth.com

Hi all. Cold winter this year, lots of damage to many plants. I'd rate this more of a zone 3b/4a winter. Low was -32C, was below -30C twice, many days with highs below -20C, only a couple of breaks. I think maybe Jesse and I change climates for a year!

A really tough year.

Ilex aquipernyi, I'd rate this selection a solid 5b plant. A little too cold in Sydenham! All leaves brown, stem damage at a minimum.
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Yucca glorisa (tennessee seed grown), #1. Looks ok, most of the leaves are cold damaged, but the spear looks good
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#2, perhaps a little more damage.
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Yucca 'elata', more damage than usual but spear looks good.
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A Spruce with leaf damage, just so you know it was really cold. I've not seen this around here before, last time I saw this was in Northern Ontario in 2002
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Rhododendron maximum damage. I must have a weak seletion or something, this thing should be able to handle much colder!
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Rhododendron brachycarpum ssp. tigerstedtii looks mint. These things are so damned hardy
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Some leaf damage on Ilex pendunculosa, these are really solid plants and I have no idea why they aren't more widely planted
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Magnolia virginiana "Northern Belle", supposed to be the toughest evergreen virginiana. Maybe when it's older? Stem tip die back at a minimum
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Fargesia nitida more damage than normal. Should recover fine by June
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Sabal minor (under palm house). Mint.
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Rhapidophyllum hystrix (under palm house) looks as it did in fall.
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Sabal minor #2. Also mint. Also palm house.
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Magnolia grandiflora something, stem tip kill at a minimum.
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Pieris japonica and some large leaf Rhodies. Damaged, but may not have stem kill?
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That's all for now. Other stuff will follow later, but they won't have seen temps as cold since they'll have had snow cover.

It looks like you had a worst winter then us in gta. The Rhododendron brachycarpum looks really good. Do you think your magnolias going to survive?

It's a zone 4b/5a near Kingston, so 1/2 to 1 zone colder than the GTA, but the extremes seem to be much lower, consistantly... It's actually remarkabl similar to Montreal!

Hey Paul...

Considering the winter you had this year the damage so far isnt so bad. Quite a few of the large spruce and cedar trees here are a bit burnt but they almost always fully recover. The plus for me is the amount of snow on the ground. Most if not all of my sensitive plants are completely buried. That I, pendunculosa looks pretty good as well, too bad we dont see anything close to that up here, just the euro/jap hybrid "blueboy/girl", which defoliated a bit last year with minimum tip die back, but flowered and grew a good 3 inches. Looks like a good year to really test the boundries of your plants....

How did the paperbark maple and pawpaw do?

Hurrah for Sabal minor !

Hurrah too for Y.elata and Y.gloriosa.
That was quite the test.

Thanks for the update.

We'll see how the deciduous trees fared in a month or so. My thought are that the paw-paw and paperbark maples will all be fine. I'm more worried about the willow-leaf oak and Magnolia!

Sabal minor seems to get tougher and tougher. They must have seen -17C this winter (dry mind you) but they don't have a scratch. The 2 needles are also solid... Getting palms through a winter is easy, it's getting the "hardy" BLEs and other tropicalesque stuff that's the challenge here!!!! Grrrr.