 it's a pleasure to be talking with you about trees. As Tom mentioned, there's a lot of small trees, a lot of large trees. What I like about the small trees, they give you a little bit more intimate close-up of a tree in your landscape, in your yard. You may have large trees that form the framework of your landscape, but the smaller trees can offer quite a bit more for you within a landscape. So with that, what I'm going to do is just go through some of the small trees, and I'll tell you a little bit about what's considered a small tree. You know, we're all familiar with elms and ash and spruce, which are 50, 60, 70 foot tall, but smaller trees are pretty much only about a half to third of that size. So we're talking about on the very small end, maybe eight to 10 feet in height, and then up to the larger, the larger of the small end, maybe about 25 to 30 feet in height. So they're quite a bit smaller than the large trees growing in your yard. They can be single stemmed. They can be growing in a multi-stemmed form. Their spread can be equal to their height. Their spread can be very narrow. There's a lot of selections that have gone on in the ornamental world for landscape type ornamental trees, small ornamental trees. The flip side of that is you can have taller growing shrubs that can occasionally be pruned into small trees. If any of you have seen common lilac, which are 50, 60 years old in landscape, they're actually oftentimes trimmed into a small multi-stem tree. Now there are large growing trees. There's cultivars selected from very large growing trees that have been selected to grow in a small tree form. So some of these things shift back and forth, and there may be not always what we consider large or small within a certain species. So with that, most people when you talk about small ornamental trees, what is usually comes to mind. Crab apples are probably one of the first ones. Crab apples are very common throughout our area, very hardy, provide a spring bloom. There's many to choose from. And what I say here, that's an entirely different discussion than what I'm going to do tonight. I am not a crab apple specialist. There are many forms and features of crabs, and I'll talk in a few minutes where you can look some of those up, but we're not going to talk about those tonight. Amramaple is probably the most commonly planted maple across our state, a small maple, a number of different cultivars and selections, and I am going to touch on those. The other thing which we see a lot of in our landscapes are the purple leaf choked cherry, the Canada cherry, or the called Schuber choked cherry. It's hard to put a plant like in. I consider the foliage kind of garish, hard to fit into a landscape, but a lot of people like that purple leaf brown foliage that they have. But in my mind, they just have too many problems. They sucker just horribly in a landscape, difficult to control. There's a number of disease problems that they have. You can see on the slide there, that's an example of black knot, which is pretty rampant in the choked cherries and their hybrids, often called poop on a stick. So if you really want to have a noteworthy fungus in your yard, that's what you have with black knot. And there's also a number of bacterial and fungal leaf spot diseases. So it's a plant that I really don't recommend. It's great out in a wildlife planting. It's great out in a shelter bell planting. But when we put it in a landscape, there's a lot of problems that develop from it. So I'm not going to be discussing the purple leaf choked cherry snide either. As I mentioned, I did want to come back to crabapple just a minute because there are hundreds of cultivars. There's a lot of work that's been done. A lot of work that's been done at NDSU over the years. And there are so many differences in crabapples. Disease resistance is probably the biggest one we look for. Flower color, flower duration, fruit characteristics, the form. Crabapples now are everything from widespreading to very narrow upright to fit in the landscapes. Different rootstock. So if you're interested in crabapples, I've listed a few sources here. The first one is a publication you can find on the internet. Just look up choice flowering crabapple cultivars for the northern plains or NDSU choice flowering crabapples, whatever it may be. Dr. Dale Herman, when he was here at the time and Larry Sheppy and now Todd West have done an extensive evaluation of the best crabapples for the northern plains. So you can go to that. It describes a number of crabapple cultivars with different parameters of leaf color flowers. And you can kind of get selecting. If you're looking for a crabapple, you can go that way and select. You can also go on the internet. J. Frank Nursery has what they call their crabapple chart, which lists a lot of crabapples, a lot of their disease resistance flowers, colors once again. So there's a lot of information out there. And if you're really wanting to crab in your landscape, I guess I would really recommend researching it first and determining the one that you do really want for your yard. I'm going to talk a little bit about amour maples, not a lot, but I'm going to talk about them because they are probably one of the most adaptable small maples that we can grow in the Dakotas. Amour maple is not generally thought of, but amour maple, as you can see in the photo here, it is a flowering tree. That yellowish clusters on there are flowers. They flower fairly heavily in the spring. Most of them are seedling propagated that have been grown up to this date. They're used again in landscapes, in conservation plantings, very pH tolerant trees, small tree, 15 to 20 foot in height, 15 to 20 foot in spread. So very adaptable, grown as a single stem or multi-stem. So there are a lot. One of the things we really like in our area is fall color. So amour maples provide that and kind of put on an annual display force in the fall. One way to ensure that is to look at the cultivars that are offered by the garden centers and nurseries in your area because there's been a lot of selection on amour maple now, both for fall color on the left-hand side there. You can see that picture campfire, but also red November and flame have brilliant red fall foliage. So if that's something you're looking for, there are cultivars that provide that. The other two pictures are of other amour maple cultivars that have in the summertime the very bright red samaras on their seed wings. And you can see those. I have to explain it's not the flowers, it's the seed wings on the amour maples that are turning. So they're very bright through the summer months. So they kind of provide a nice color in the landscape and it lasts a long time to color on those. Very closely related to amour maple is totarian maple. In fact, one is a subspecies of the other. So totarian maple, a little bit different in that it's a little bit heavier tree, a little bit more upright, more easily trained into a single stem. And again, there's been a number of forms of those introduced. Again, selected for the real red samaras, several of them. Most of the ones that are available pattern perfect hot wings is the one that's really popular rugged charm. Again, selected for that the totarian maple are not as brightly fall colored as the amour maple. More of a yellow to yellow orange. Some may approach an orange red, but not as quite a bright color, but a little more of a substantial tree form. I'm going to go back one slide and you can see the differences in form on some of the totarian. And the front here is hot wings, which is more of a rounded with the bright red wings. On the back is, I believe it's pattern perfect, much more upright type form for growing in the landscape. I do want to mention a few other small maples. We like maples, you know, we typically we plant a huge silver maple in our yard or attempt some sugar maples, but we don't go much beyond that. So there are some other small maples that we can incorporate, maybe give them a little better spot in the landscape and use them. On the right side there is just beginning into fall is a small sugar maple called Apollo. And it is called Apollo because of the form of that tree. It's much like the space capsule Apollo for which it was named. But it's a very, very compact sugar maple, 25 to 30 foot, 12 foot in width, doing extremely well in our Absoraco horticulture farm. And several of the nurserymen I talked to in South Dakota recently said it does very, very well for them also. So I think it's a plant that is available and we can look at growing that in our area. Just a neat little tree. If you don't have room for the full size sugar maple, 60, 70 foot tall, 60, 70 foot wide, then certainly you can consider Apollo sugar maple. I want to mention the Korean maples or Korean palmate maples. I think a lot of us visit either the east or west coast and some of those more moderate areas and wish we could grow the Japanese maples that are in those areas. Japanese, the true Japanese palmate maple is not hardy in our area. Sometimes grown as an annual incorporated into container plantings, but it will generally not overwinter here unless it's very, very protected. But a close cousin of that, of that those palmate maples is Korean maple, Korean palmate maple. It's got very silky spring expanding foliage, grows very, very well here, kind of tends to grow in a multi-stem form, which is nice in a bed in the yard to have more of a multi-stem effect rather than just a single stem effect. What's different about it is the foliage after it gets the fall color on it is retained through the winter months, kind of a brown to orange brown color. Some people like that, some do not, but what that is is a protective mechanism to prevent to winter damage and sunscald on those stems on the Korean maple. This tree is hardy to minus 35 to minus 40 consistently. It occurs at high elevations in South Korea and well up into North Korea where it really gets the extremes up in that area. It's a neat little tree. There is a release from our program that is now becoming available called Northern Spotlight Korean Maple. If you're familiar with Isley Nursery, the premier dwarf conifer grower on the West Coast, they are now growing Northern Spotlight Korean Maple. Isley Nursery ships a lot of dwarf conifers into nurseries in our area. If you're interested in Korean Maple, maybe talk to your local garden center nursery person if they buy from Isley. See if they've gotten Northern Spotlight available as a small Korean Maple for this area. The other thing we have done, we've tried several sources just of seedling sources of Korean Maple. Those sources have performed very well. They have a lot of cold hardiness. Seedlings of Korean Maple or seedling grown Korean Maple, I should say, are pretty generally available in a number of nurseries now. Both in this area and as if you get into Minnesota, a little more available over into that area. But again, it's another source of a small maple, small homemade maple, which you can try in our area. I mentioned Isley Nursery. They've kind of taken it a step further as pretty much what we're doing in our program too, but they're taking the hardy Korean Maple and then crossing that with the Palmade Maples, the Japanese Palmade Maples. Now all of those hybrids have not been hardy here to date. We're a test location for them. I should say all but one. This cultivar North Wind has been very hardy for us, both in town and out at the Absaraka Horticulture Farm. North Wind is pretty readily available at some of the larger nurseries now, and it's another Palmade Maple. It comes out as kind of a bronzy green in the spring, very nice attractive foliage through the summer, and then gets kind of an orange bronze color on the foliage in the fall, and it does drop its leaves through the winter. It doesn't retain them. So it's another nice small Palmade Maple that is starting to catch on and being being used in our area. I want to talk about some of the small spring flowering tree forms that I call them. Some of these may even approach more of a tall shrub, but I'm going to include some of them. You know spring here, we like to see flowers, we like to see something bright, something unique. So I'll talk about a few of these. And one of those that I really like that I've watched for a number of years is one called Northern Pearl's Pearl Bush. It's just not a familiar plant to us here. It's in the genus exocorta, which is not hardy here, but again we go to those Korean areas, higher altitudes, northern areas, and there's another species there called Serratifolia, and the University of Minnesota landscape or University of Minnesota has selected a plant from there that has been totally hardy, can be trimmed into a small tree form, as I say 9 to 12 feet in height. The bloom on here in mid-May is just when you're wanting to see something in flower, it's just covered with these bright white small flowers on a very attractive plant. So if you can find Northern Pearl's Pearl Bush, it's been hardy in our area, provides some of that early, early spring color for us. Magnolias, people are always surprised when we say we can grow a couple of magnolias here, and it's mostly within the Magnolias Stalata Cobus Levneri group. These are Northern Asian magnolias. They're deciduous, they lose their leaves each fall. A lot of people think of the Southern Magnolia and say, well, we can't grow that here, and that's right, we can't grow that here. But in Northern Asia there's several species that are extremely hardy. There's been a number of selections from those. We've trialed a number of those selections. Several of them that have done fairly well for us. The first one is Royal Star Magnolia, and this is kind of depending on where it's placed and how long it's grown, could either be a tall shrub or trimmed into a small tree. Very nice double flowers, very nice summer foliage on it. Very, very early though in bloom. This is going to bloom in early to mid-May, and in a few minutes I'll talk about the dangers of blooming in early to mid-May, which I'm sure you're all aware of. But it's kind of a nice small tree, a tall shrub. Another one is Meryl Magnolia, and Meryl is extremely hardy. It's been grown clear up into the northeast corner of the state. It's a little bit shy or shyer in flowering than the other cultivars, but it's done very well. It's much more upright in form. It's much more tree form than the Royal Star Magnolia. I mentioned another one at the bottom here that is showing up in our area. There's another one called Spring Welcome, which is actually an MDSU tree program release, and some nurseries in the area are starting to carry that. Once again, it's one of these similar northern Asian type magnolias with the white flower petals on a bright white flower petal. So there's several that you can work in. Maybe put them in an area in your yard. It's going to be a little protected. Maybe bloom a little bit later. Don't put it in an area where it gets a lot of early spring warmth on it. You want to delay that flowering as long as you can. This is what happens when they do bloom early. On your left, those aren't leaves on there. Those were flowers that came out, and then a very cold snap snow afterwards. That's one of the dangers. On the right side, if we get a severe winter, very dry upper areas of the plants, severe cold on it, we can have flowering just below the snow line in some years. In trying some of these and growing them, the plants still do fine, but you may not get that flowering that you're anticipating every year. So it's one of those things. You got to be patient. Take it when it's good, and expect that you're not going to have it every year, but kind of a neat plant to work into a border type planting in the landscape. One of the earliest to bloom, and you see these in early May as you drive around, is Princess Kay flowering plum. And if you see one of these in bloom and go up to it, the flowers are really amazing on them. They're doubled flowers, very, very dense, almost like they're in a bouquet. This is Prunus nigra. It's a plum that is native, actually the Canada. So it's a zone two flowering plum, very, very hardy for our area. Again, I don't like them planted just out in an open area, but if you can plant it in a little more intimate setting, near an entryway or a patio, that early spring bloom on them is just really fantastic. Summer, it's typical foliage on it, but spring for something early, it's quite a striking plant to have in your landscape. One plant that's really not used in our area is one called serviceberry. Now if we think of serviceberry here, we think of juneberries, and these are actually like the big brothers of juneberries. Very early blooming, similar to juneberry, but these are tree form. These will get 20 to 28 foot in height. I think the one in my backyard in Bismarck is actually pushing 30 foot. So they will get very tall, profuse bloom in the spring, white blooms, kind of white clouds. Again, early May, there's a number of cultivars. Cumulus is the one on the left here. Autumn Brilliance, Robin Hill, Lustre. There's many more than this, but really not used in our area. They get a nice trunk caliper to them, a nice structure, kind of a multi-stem structure going up. Very unique, and they do get fruit on them, similar to juneberries, a little smaller, but you're not going to be picking them because you're going to be 20 foot up in the air if you are trying to pick them. But if you like birds in your yard, the birds love these. They will hang from the branches trying to pull that fruit off in there. Amarchery is one of my favorite little trees. It does very well, except in the situation where it's planted in full winter sun on a boulevard. You need to plant it in an area in your landscape where you can minimize that winter sun. They tend to get a little bit of bark cracking on them. Other than that, for winter interest, the bark is really fantastic on them. Just kind of a coppery bronze. There's a lot of variation on it. Very early spring blooming. Again, early May, white flower clusters as the foliage comes out. But nice trees, but I do want to mention a new one that's out from Jeffrey's Nursery up in Porties for Ferry, Manitoba. This is called Gold Spur, and it's a much smaller selection of amarchery. 15 foot height, 10 foot width, and why it is smaller is that it's called the internode. The distance between the buds is much shorter than on a typical amarchery, so it gives it a very dense crown to it. It's a really attractive small tree. These trees, the amarcheries, do fruit, but they get a very small kind of black purple fruit. It ripens right around the 1st of July through about the 4th or 6th of July, but the birds are stripping these before they even fall. They really like them. So it's a good bird food. There's a couple other cultivars, Klondike and Ming, but they're both full-size amarcheries, and they were selected to have better resistance to winter bark damage on it. So we'll see how those hold up. It would be great if they do. A native little tree from western Minnesota east to the east coast is Pagoda dogwood. Pagoda, you'd think it was an Asian species, but this is an 80 dogwood. We can't grow the flowering dogwoods of the southeast up here, but this is a tree-form dogwood, a penicillate. The flowers are in panicles. Dogwood that's hardy to zone three, just covered with white blooms in the spring. My wife and I have grown Pagoda dogwoods for probably 15, 18 years. They're a real joy to watch them, the insects that come, as the fruits ripen on them, the profuse fruit set on them, and again the birds will come and strip those off of there. They'll hang right in the tree pulling those off. They ripen in August when a lot of other things aren't quite ripe yet, so Pagoda dogwood forms an early food form. But just a super little tree. They're not a drought tolerant tree. They like to be grown in a damp spot if you've got an area on the north side of a house that stays cooler in the root run. You can mulch it. They do very well under those conditions. A neat little tree that actually came out of the NDSU program is called prairie jam flowering pear. It's a Yassurian pear, but it suddenly gets 25 foot tall, 25 by 25, very, very dense branching in it. It's almost a, I guess I would call it more of a dwarf form of Yassurian pear, but dwarf and then again, it's those shorter inner nodes that give it a very dense appearance, early May, bright white blooms on it. These trees look like they've been sheared, but this is the form that they grow in. If you go to the, if you're at the Hector airport here in Fargo, the north entrance, the very north entrance, not the south entrance, has a row of these planted along the road. And they really look neat in a row situation like that as a formal entrance to the north side of the airport. But just a nice small, often promoted for use under higher power lines, so neat little tree. Japanese tree lilacs, they've now become the go-to plant in a lot of areas, whether that's good or bad, it's hard to say. Most of them have been seedling grown up until this time, but then now are a lot of cultivars coming out, 15 to 20 foot, even 25 foot on some cultivars, but these bloom much later, mid to late June. All the other, the shrub lilacs are done in the spring. And then these big, showy, white, large, panicles come out. These are very, very soil and pH adaptable, can just tolerate some horrible conditions. There's a row along south side of Kirkwood Mall and Bismarck that's been there for years. It gets the worst of traffic, salts, droughts, everything. And they look great every year. They're just happy to be there. So they're a neat little tree. On the right side, you can see two different forms. The tree in the back is a seedling grown Japanese tree lilac. You really don't know what you're going to get with that. Just to the right of it, on the other side of the sidewalk, is a cultivar called ivory silk, which is a much smaller, compact tree lilac, which will get about 15 to 18 foot tall. So there are a number of different cultivars. I list them here. Ivory silk is probably the most common one you can get. Snow cap is going to be similar in form to ivory silk. Ivory pillar is more upright in form. Snow dance is out of Bailey nursery in Minnesota. Blooms very heavily with minimal seed production. It does get some seed on it. Some people don't like the large panicles that persist on it. Others like it for the winter appearance, but snow dance produces much less of those panicles. Snow storm, another smaller, heavily blooming one. And then golden eclipse is actually one with variegated foliage, yellow and green foliage. So if you want a tough tree for your landscape, have a tougher spot, the Japanese tree lilacs will very well fit the bill for that area. Peek and tree lilac. From a distance, you're going to think these are the same trees, but actually the peaking tree lilac is different from Japanese tree lilac. And the neatest thing about it, if you look on the right there, is the exfoliating bark that has been selected in a number of cultivars. Exfoliating, peeling for the winter interest. Copper curls is one out of Andy SU. And then there's others, Beijing gold with yellowish flowers and summer charm and China snow have that exfoliating bark. I'm always kind of pushing Amor Machia. It's a tree that's just not used in this area. We need to trial it more. Just kind of a small, round-headed tree, fantastic kind of orange coppery bark on it. It kind of sits there in the landscape until mid-July. And we have no other trees blooming in mid-July. And this thing bursts into flower with these spike-like flowers. If you have an interest in native pollinators, bumblebees, butterflies, they swarm this tree by the thousands. So when nothing else is blooming, Amor Machia, mid-July, sometimes into early August is blooming. And there's cultivars of this also. Magnificent starburst in summertime. Very unique little tree. Wanted to mention Prairie Radiance. Juwanamas, not used a lot, but there's several nurseries that are growing it. Small tree, again out of the NDSU program, but very well suited to our area. Sits there a nice green foliage in the spring. It does get some flowers early, but pretty much none distinct flowers. But then red to bright red in the fall and the fruit in the upper right hand side of the slide there. These bright red arrows open up and then the birds take those through the winter. Just finishing up, I want to mention one last little plant, American Fringe Tree. Really hasn't been used in our area, but surprisingly hardy. This is another native plant, native to the eastern US. Pretty much up and down the whole eastern US and out into the eastern Midwest. Native plant actually related to lilacs. It's in the same same olive type family, but for bloom for a native, one of the native plants, this is just unsurpassed. We've tried several sources. They grow very well. They bloom in June. So again, we have another plant blooming in June. They're male and female flowers, very similar. But if you've got a bed area for a small plant, we don't quite know how big they're going to get in our area. Our largest ones are only approaching about six foot now, maybe a little over. But widely available, but one worth trying if you're interested in trying something different in your area, interested in native plants. And some contact information here. So if any of you want to contact myself or Dr. West, information on here and you can get hold of us. Thank you. Okay. Let's ask some questions out there. And Greg, that's just, I just love that presentation and those photos and those are beautiful trees. Okay, here's a couple questions. One is, I don't think you ever got this one before. This guy wants a plant, one or two rows along his property line to filter spray dripped from, that comes from neighbor before it damages his more sense of trees. So do you have a good filter or a barrier planting? He suggests, how about cedar or juniper? Those are the first to come to mind, but if that's that much of a spray problem, I guess I would maybe talk to your neighbor first. I mean, if he's drifting that much spray onto your property. But as Tom mentioned, maybe eastern red cedar or Rocky Mountain juniper would be of the plants we have. I don't want to say tolerant because you can you can damage those also. How about this person has a topiary lilac tree that's 19 years old. Do you have any advice about the best time to trim it and in what shape to trim it in? I don't. I'm a big lover of natural tree form. But with all the lilacs, whether they be shrub or tree, prunam just after blooming so that they set flower buds for the next year. If you wait until late and trim those heavily, you're going to be cutting off any flower buds that have formed in there. So prunam after flowering, just after flowering and into whatever form you may need. But I'm certainly no topiary expert at all. How about Apollo sugar maple? You're an expert on that. Yes. Is that more tolerant of a high-page soil in a regular sugar maple? A lot of that goes back. I suppose everybody heard the question on tolerance of high pH. What the rootstock is on. So those rootstocks, if they're coming out of Pennsylvania or wherever it may be on the east coast, they're not going to be as tolerant to high pH. So we're hoping the nurseries that are propagating it are using Midwest sugar maple rootstock. Our plants at Absuraka are growing on a pH of about 7, 8, 7, 9. So it's not a low pH where they're growing. They're on a higher pH. You're going fine. Great. How about is the Apollo sugar maple and the Korean palm-mated maples, are they prone to iron chorosis? Goes back to that pH problem. If you've got plants in your landscape that are already showing chorosis, then certainly they may be. One of the things that we suggest everybody do is get a soil sample from your yard and see what your pH is, what problems there may be. Available nitrogen, pH is going to affect all these problems. If you may have any salts in your soil, whatever it may be, but figure out what you're planting into before you plant into it. How tall do the Korean maples get? Initially, height on Korean maples, initially I was thinking maybe 20 foot, but my older plant, my personal plant is probably pushing at least that now and into the low 20s on height and spread. So in a good area, they may get a little larger than that. So you may want to up it to about 22 by 22 or so instead of the 20 by 18 or so, whatever I had before. How about we got a hungry gardener here and those pagoda dogwood foods look delicious. Can she eat them and bite the birds over them? Are they edible? They're not suggested as edible. Dogwood fruits, if you can get past the extreme bitterness, would be edible, but this is not considered one of the edible dogwoods. There are a number of edible dogwoods, but these are not considered as such. Okay. The serviceberry had the same prom as choke cherries with junipers. Okay. Yeah. Question on the serviceberries and junipers, cedar apple rust. And if you've got a lot of junipers, eastern red cedar, Rocky Mountain Juniper, they're both in the juniper family, and they are the alternate hosts for cedar apple rust and the apple family being the other hosts, then there could be problems with it. Yeah. Look in your area, if you have cedar apple rust on your crab apples and apple trees, then you may be prone to cedar apple rust in your area. On serviceberry. On serviceberry. How about junberry? Same thing. How about you showed a picture of that Magnolia that got hammered so that you only saw a few blooms at the bottom below the snow line. So how would you trim that situation? What would you do about that? All you would do is just give it its normal care the following season. What happens, the flower buds may freeze off, but the vegetative buds where the leaves come out do not freeze off. It's going to leaf out normally and be a normal plant. You're just not going to have flowers that year, much like on an apricot where you can freeze all the flowers off early, but the tree still leaves out and grows normally. It just won't have fruit that year. Same situation on these hardy magnolias. Greg, how can we not respect Russian olives as a specimen tree in the yard? A beautiful orange bark and interesting foliage color. Come on, blue is green. I used to grow 300,000 Russian olive a year. How many did you grow? 300,000 a year. Is that awful? No, Russian olive as we reach the central Dakotas moving west, that is one of the primary trees that does well in our landscapes. I would never tell anybody not to plant it. In fact, you get to the western edge of the state, that's going to be a plant that actually will do well for you. Very saline tolerant, high pH tolerant, very intense fragrance in the flowering, attractive silver foliage. Okay, good. How about the hardiness of the North Korean maple, or maybe it was that North Wind Korean maple? North Wind Korean maple. We know it's hardy down to about minus 30 to 32, 34. We haven't pushed it beyond that. We're the straight Korean maple or the northern spotlight selection are hardy to minus 40. We're just not sure how low the North Wind Korean hybrid maple will go. How about this person has a Meryl Magnolia called Dr. Meryl Magnolia? Dr. Meryl, same thing. It's 10 years old and it's covered in large white flowers every April. This person's from Cass County. Do you think this spring may be the exception? I don't think so. We haven't gotten that cold this winter. The temperature is what affects it. I mean, I say we haven't gotten that cold. Obviously it's been cold, but when we talk about damage to flowers, we're talking down in the mid minus 30s, and we haven't had that in the central part of the state, eastern part of the state. We've been down to minus 26, minus 28, but haven't gone lower than that. The buds are still protected. The buds have not started pushing yet. The other flip side is people talk about windshield. Plants care nothing about windshield. The windshield can be 80 below, and the plant isn't affected by that unless the temperature is 35, 45 below. But windshield doesn't matter to a plant, so they should be fine as long as we haven't reached that critical low temperature. And she should send me her address. I'd like to see her treat. Well, okay. You got air, Ronda. How about, what's so special about spring welcome, Magnolia? Spring welcome is one that was selected by Dr. Herman here from a population, and it's done very well, as hardy as the others. Pretty essentially more of a tree form than the Royal Star of Magnolia, a little more spreading than Meryl. So it's kind of in between those blooms profusely with a good flower bud set on it. And it's starting to be produced now, and at least in this area, eastern North Dakota is starting to show up in nurseries and being offered. So it's another one we can grow. Okay, we're going to go quickly here. What do you think about, how about the Magnolia and the Princess Cape palm? Are they good for pollinators? Oh, that's a good question. The Magnolias, yes, early, the very early bumblebees, I assume she's talking about working the flowers. The very early bumblebees will work the flowers on the Magnolias, yeah, and that's an early source of pollen for them. The Magnolias are big pollen producers, so that's what they'll be grabbing early. The Princess Cape plum, it is slightly fertile. I do see some fruit, I guess I've never looked at it to see what is working at that time on it. Double flowers. It may be lesser. Do you have a recommended tree for a boulevard? How about that for an open question? It depends on the site, but the Japanese tree lilacs are extremely hardy. Again, check and see what form they have about the nurseries, but if it's a tough situation, Japanese tree lilac would be a great one. I didn't talk about any of the bigger trees today, and if you're looking for a larger tree on a boulevard, there's certainly a lot of choices for that, especially as we diversify because of Admiral Ashfor, but there's a number of elm cultivars, some maple cultivars, lindens, so there's a lot of boulevard trees, which really wasn't a part of this talk, but certainly if you want a recommendation or you want to talk more, feel free to email me at any time. Greg, we have a question from our YouTube live stream. There is a lilac that was developed for Zone 3 or 4 that has purple and dark purple on the same flower. I can't remember the name. Do you know if that lilac is long lived? Okay, a lilac with purple and dark purple on the flowers. Okay, the only thing I that I can think of is a bi-colored flower called Sensation. It's one of the shrub lilacs, and it does have a dark purple with a lighter, light purple edging to it, so Sensation Lilac, and it does very well in our area, and it's a larger shrub type lilac, so it'd be the one that would come to mind. Yeah, lilacs live a long time, unless they're in a wet spot. Yeah, that's their only weakness. Yep, and they prefer to have it drier and a little tougher. Speaking of wet spots, do you have a recommendation for a good small tree in a wet area but out in the open country? At the top of my head, I guess it'd be a little difficult. I don't know what they mean by wet. You know, most of the flowering trees I talked about like a well-drained soil, with the exception if you get into some of the willows and those type areas, but I guess I wouldn't have. I mean, if you're going to be in the open, you're going to need a pretty tough plant into that situation. Maybe a tall shrub. Yeah, or depending on the soils, even American cranberry, whatever it may be. Getting back to Russian olives, one of your favorite trees, are they invasive? Russian olives in the right environment are extremely invasive, so that's why a number of states, they can still be planted in North Dakota, Montana, but Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, all the inter-mountain states have prohibited the use of Russian olives. What we're working on and some of the early work I did is hybrids with Russian olive and silverberry are a little native, eely agnes, and those hybrids are sterile, but they grow more in a multi-stem form. But Jeffery's nursery carries those, silverscape and Silverado. If you want that silver color but not invasive, then those would be the ones to go to. Any suggestions? How do you keep deer out of a magnolia? The only way to keep deer out of anything is to fence them. We're killing them. How about a goaded dogwood? How does that do an alkaline soil? A goaded dogwood does not like alkaline soil. Alkaline, I assume you mean salts in it. It's not going to be a salt tolerant. It does grow on mid to upper 7s in a well-drained damp soil, but it's not a substitute for those things that will tolerate IPH. I'm going to keep you just too wise. You have too much information, so we have to keep your answers short. Greg, these people are pushing an envelope here. Ohio Buckeye, you got a quick comment on that? I love Ohio Buckeye. Seedling grown. There's a lot of seedling grown, but what's your plant team? Seedling grown now, or the cultivars. Autumn Splendor and Homestead are widely available. Two great trees with better summer foliage quality that do extremely well in our area, and well into Canada. How about Regal Prince Oak? Hey, Regal Prince, it's early in our trials. It's performed well to date. Very nice, very columnar upright oak, where you don't have enough of that on it now to see how it performs. If you want an upright oak that does super here, beautiful upright, very densely upright, is crimson spire, and it turns a beautiful orange in the fall. Just a great tree, very upright oak. Okay, and this is kind of illegal, but I'm going to ask you this anyhow. Somebody asked about Autumn Blaze, Freeman Mayfall. It is a small tree when it's young, so I guess we can Oh sure, when are we on them? The first three or four years, yes. Yeah, one stands on Autumn Blaze. Are you up for it or against it? Autumn Blaze is a nice tree. We tend to get some chlorosis and winter damage and severe winters here. It's got a nice form to it. There are other Freeman maples that do as well or better to versify. Firefall from University of Minnesota is a great tree. Sienna Glen. There's some others of those, and I'll be talking on maples on April 21st at the Bismarck Dakota Garden Expo. I'm talking just on maples at the event show. One last question. What would you recommend as far as a small tree in a high clay content soil? The tree lilacs, pecan lilac, Japanese tree lilac, amour cherry, all have performed very well under those situations. Okay, Greg, yes. Outstanding. Just love this talk, and there are, there will be a field day in Absarac this summer. So how do you find out about that? Field day should come out through notice through the extension. Esther McGinnis, the Eastern North Dakota extension horticulturalist, puts out a blurb and tries to get it out to the newspapers each year, but be looking around the third, fourth week of August for open house at Absaraca. It would be great if we would have a couple hundred people out there. We get 60, 70, 80, but we can certainly adapt to a twice or three times that. So keep that in mind. If you want to see a lot of these trees, it's a great place to do it. Okay, thank you, Greg, again, and always welcome here. Thanks for your contribution tonight for the forum. Thank you. Thank you next year. Thank you, Greg. Okay, we're going to take a quick five-minute break, and then we're going to talk about Elms. Take a break.