 And evergreens are also wonderful for us in landscapes, especially because they stop those winter winds. That's why they're so popular. But also, they provide nice beauty all year round. They give us privacy. They're very useful in the home landscape. And they're really fortunate tonight to have an expert on evergreens with us tonight. Greg Morgensen is a Woody ornamentals researcher on the NDSU here in Fargo. He's one of the leading Woody ornamental researchers in the Midwest. He's got a lot of great practical knowledge for us. And he's going to share with us the best evergreens or sometimes referred to as conifers more technically, properly. The best conifers for North Dakota. So let's welcome Greg. OK, thank you, Tom. I said conifers because not all evergreens are conifers. You have broadleaf evergreens. You've got rhododendrons, boxwoods. So when I talk about conifers, I usually talk about evergreens. I talk about conifers, which are evergreen-type trees. So I'll mention I work with the NDSU Woody Plant Improvement Program, where Dr. Todd West, who replaced Dale Herman after Dale retired. And we just kind of taken off from that and kept the program growing and on to new and higher things, I guess. So with that, I could have the lights over here. How many of you have been after the Absaraka Horticulture Research Farm? We have an open house every year. I'd certainly encourage you to come out as you come in the gate. We've got what we call what used to be the dwarf conifer and mixed conifer planting. Some of them are getting fairly tall, but we have many, many deciduous and coniferous plants planted at the Absaraka Research Farm that are there pretty much for people to view. White conifers are evergreens. And pretty much in North Dakota, we go seven months without a leaf on a tree. So it's nice to have conifers in our landscapes. They give us colors year-round. Mini green, of course, the blues of Colorado spruce. And then even some of the Arborvita and some of the other conifers have a yellow to gold foliage on them too. So it provides winter color for us. They provide a backdrop for smaller growing plants. A lot of plants do well in the protection of larger plants for any old small shrubs. So they work well in that area. Hedges and screenings, nosy neighbors. You can put Arborvita hedge in there and you'll never know they're over there. And they can be utilized in many forms. We think about conifer as a large tree, which is what I'm going to talk about tonight. But they come in very, very many forms. Pyramidal, columnar, weeping, some are shrubs and some are low ground cover. So there's a lot of conifers to choose from. And as Tom had mentioned, we need to use them to provide winter and summer windbreaks for our home areas, garden areas, orchards, ornamental plantings, wherever they may be. And I'm just going to talk about some of the different groups of conifers in the state. This is just a non-technical run-through of some of the conifers that are commonly used in the state and a few that maybe could be used a little more. So the pines, there's two native species of pine in North Dakota, I don't know if you guys knew that. Of course, in the western part of the state, we've got ponderosa pine and limber pine, both native to the area. Scotch pine from Europe and Asia is used across the state, hardy across the state. And then we have some Asian and European white pine species that do very well here. And those are what are called the stone pines, and I'll talk a little bit about those later. And then I just wanted to say that eastern white pine, which is native to Minnesota right next to us, is generally not adapted to North Dakota conditions. I usually do not see good examples of white pine in North Dakota, so I'm sure that they are out there in some places. Ponderosa pine, as I said, is native to the western Dakotas, western Nebraska, clear out into central Nebraska, and it's the variety scopulorum, which is very important to us. Ponderosa pine probably has one of the largest native ranges of any conifers in the US. It goes from the west coast, clear into the plain states. But we can't bring those sources from California and Oregon and Washington and even Idaho into this area and expect them to live. They are not hardy here. They have not evolved with the climate that we have here. So our variety is variety scopulorum, which is on the plains in the front range of the Rockies, which is extremely hardy, 30, 40 below, and that's very well to our conditions. Needles are in twos and threes. The cones are kind of a little smaller than a fist size to about a fist size and end in a sharp prickle on the end of it. So if you pick up a ponderosa pine cone, you can feel it as soon as you pick it up from the prickles on there. I put in my obligatory baby animal picture for everybody to see. So if you can pick the baby birds out there beside the cone. Ponderosa pine, as I said, is very, very adaptable to North Dakota conditions. Very drought tolerant, very pH adaptable, which is important in North Dakota. We have high pHs here and able to stand our winds and our winter sun on them and they do fairly well. Mature height, depending on location, 35, 45, up to 65 feet generally, depending on the conditions that they're growing in. This is the other species that's native to North Dakota, it's called limber pine. This is actually a white pine species and this is way out in Bowman County and Southwest North Dakota. In the Southwest portions of three states and plains, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, from there it goes west into the Intermountain region and occurs in the foothills and up to very high elevations. It's called limber pine because you can take those branches and bend them clear to the ground. You can, in fact, you can almost tie them in knots or so limber and so they are not damaged by snow load on them. But they grow very well here. It's just not utilized in our area. It's one of the trees that you don't generally go to a garden center and they have one in stock. You're gonna have to look for it a little bit. But they do very well. The one in the picture is this one I grew from a seed. You know, some of these I grew several actually. Some are about 30 foot tall now. So they do very well here. Scotch pine is pretty commonly known to everybody across the state. We use the Northern European and Northern Asian seed sources. As I said, ponderosa pine is very widely distributed in North America. Scotch pine is very widely distributed in Europe and Asia. So again, there are certain sources that do best for us and those that do not do well for us. If you brought Scotch pine from Spain or France or some of those areas, they do not do well for us. If you take it from the Northern areas across Europe, Russia into Mongolia, some of those areas, those sources do very well for us. So again, it's pretty much source dependent. And most of the Scotch pine sold in our area is adapted to our conditions. There's very short needles, couple inches long, very small rounded cones. And it's got an orange exfoliating bark, which is kind of neat. And they can get either as broad as tall in an open location or very tall and narrow in a tighter situation, you can see here. So the ARS station in Mandan. And you can see how the bark exfoliates off those trees in that orange pattern. It's very attractive trait of the tree. A tree that is now gaining in popularity is Swiss mountain pine. Everybody's familiar with mugo pine, those little mounds that you kind of grow that look kind of actually unnatural. Well, this is the tree form of mugo pine. This occurs in Europe at high altitudes and anywhere up 15 to 30 foot in height, grown as a single stem tree. Extremely cold hardy, extremely adaptable to our dry soil conditions and winter winds. And this is the cultivar tonnain balm. And that is the cultivar that is now becoming available. And this is a picture of a tree here in Fargo. Very little work that you need to do on it. So if you want something that looks like a Christmas tree out in your yard, that's gonna stay in place for the next 20, 30 years, then this is one you can use. It's an interesting story behind this cultivar. Dr. Dale Herman was one of the first researchers to get mugo pine seed from within this native range in Europe. He grew all these sources out when he was at South Dakota State and a lot of variation. And some of these had this very nice tree form. And actually this tree was named and selected after Dale left, but he had a big part in actually the creation of this cultivar. There are actually other plantings of it in North Dakota. This is up at Minot and some trees that I think are even nicer than tonnain balm. And again, these are some of Dale's work. And the species Swiss mountain pine is available from nurseries. In fact, Kathy mentioned Jeffery's nursery in her talk. Jeffery carries Swiss mountain pine, the seedling strains of it. So very, very nice tree pine that won't outgrow its situation. I want to talk a little bit. The stone pines are virtually, not virtually, they're unknown in this part of the country. They're more widely used on the east and west coast. Stone pines are kind of the Asian equivalent of what we would call pinion pines in our country. They have an edible seed. They call them stones there. We call them seeds here. So it's an edible nut on them. Extremely attractive trees. They have high resistance to white pine blister rust, which is killing our native white pines across the country. White pine blister rust is another disease that was introduced from Asia, which our native white pines have no tolerance evolved to it. So it's wiping out many of our native white pines. But the Asian species, since they evolved with the disease, have resistance. And then they're very ornamental. Extremely cold-hardy, to minus 50 with some of the species. Highly resistant to winter needle sun burning. I've not seen any winter sun burning on some of the species we grow. They're Swiss stone pines, Siberian stone pines, Korean stone pines, and Japanese stone pines. And I'm gonna kind of just, the picture on your right here is a pine asembra, but they're called stone pines, as I said, because they get these little wingless nuts inside. And those cones disintegrate. They don't open up and fall out. The cones disintegrate. They're ripped apart by woodpeckers and other nut collectors, so hence the name stone pine. But Swiss stone pine is extremely hardy. A number of cultivars available, one of which is from NDSU called Prairie Statesman. Some others are chelae, blue mound, and glauca compacta. So very, very nice trees. Beautiful foliage, five needles in a fascicle blue-green foliage. This is the selection from NDSU by Dr. Herman. This is the original tree out at Absaraka. And this year, 2015, it was named the Collector Conifer of the Year. So one of the conifer groups liked it so well that this is the tree that they're promoting nationally, this year. And it is available in some of the local garden centers. It's being produced in greater and greater numbers by the Oregon wholesale nurseries now. I wanted to throw in Siberian stone pine. Does very well here, slow growing. It's greener rather than blue-green. It's much more green. Very slow growth, doesn't overwhelm the landscape. It may get 30 to 35 foot. Reportedly hardy to minus 60, which I would hate to have to put a tree through minus 60. But seems like anything with the name Siberian in it has a little bit of hardiness to it. Some of the spruces, everybody's familiar with spruce. I think if you look at the conifers in about any town or city around North Dakota, probably three quarters of the conifers planted in those towns are Colorado spruces. Colorado spruces because it's highly adaptable. It's very cold hardy. It's very attractive. But as I say, it's our next over-planted species with increasing disease problems. There's a lot of diseases now occurring on Colorado spruces. Any time you over-plant a species in the numbers that we do, then the problems all start to catch up with it. Down in South Dakota to the Southwest of us, in the Black Hills, there's a variety of white spruce called Black Hills spruce. It's very well adapted to plains conditions. It's much less susceptible to some of those needle diseases. Norway spruce, generally not used in this area, but we do have a selection of it that does well here. And then a new spruce that's being tried here is a Chinese spruce that's kind of being planted out in the Northern Plains area called Myer spruce. And we're trying to increase that spruce diversity, have some others out there and kind of cut down on that reliance of Colorado spruce so much. So again, at the Absuracto Hort Farm, we have a spruce collection. So if you're interested in spruce, come out this summer and we can send you to it and you can look at a lot of spruce. There's a lot of variation between the species and the cultivars. Colorado spruce, as I said, is probably the most popular spruce planted in the state. It looks best when they're grown, they're full-form, separated from each other and allowed to branch to the ground. Much too often, we'll put three of them in a landscape, six foot apart, and in 10 years, they've all grown into each other and they're covering the sidewalk or the front entrance and then everybody starts hacking the branches off of them. So if you can get them out and let them be, that's their best situation. And plus that provides a lot of air movement around in that foliage and less susceptibility to diseases. There is a whole mania which has come about with Colorado spruce. I don't know how many cultivars there are of Colorado spruce, but there are people that do nothing but collect Colorado spruce cultivars. And that's where the blue colors and the forms, these are just a couple of them that are fairly common and widely adaptable. Fat Albert is one of them. Can't quite figure out why they call it Fat Albert because it's basically a little more compact form of Colorado spruce. You know what you're gonna get with this and it may still get 30, 35 foot tall but it's not gonna be the size of an overwhelmingly large Colorado spruce at 60 or 70 foot. Another one of very blue foliage is called Baby Blue Eyes becoming very popular and these are just a few. If you Google Colorado spruce cultivars you're gonna get all kinds of plants. If you don't want the large plants you can get the small plants anywhere from several foot high up to about six or seven foot high. There are many, many, many cultivars of Colorado spruce. These are all grafted cultivars and so you can pretty much know what form they're gonna be in the landscape. If you're into dwarf conifers, come out and see our collection. We have a lot of these. These are some of the plants in our collection out at Absaraka. But too many of a good thing causes problems. As you go through anywhere, I think any town in North Dakota you can drive around and see needle cast on spruce, bare limbs on spruce, dead trees. We tend to plant them way too close together and we plant way too many of them. We like, you know, in the Midwest we like our shelter belts that are the same species a half a mile long and we need to not do that. We need to break these up with multiple conifer species, multiple deciduous species. Then you don't have this disease transmission right down the rows like we get. Just a couple more shots, just shots around town and small towns around. You can really see the problems coming into Colorado spruce. There's two needle cast diseases, rhizopharynstigmina, which causes the needle cast and then we have a branch and trunk fungus called cytospera that kills whole limbs at a time. So there's a lot of things going on with Colorado spruce right now. Black Hills spruce, as I mentioned, native in the Black Hills of South Dakota. You drive through Spearfish Canyon down there. You see a lot of spruce in the canyon. Those are all Black Hills spruce. And that's basically a white spruce that's native to the North of us in Canada which kind of got marooned as the climate changed and became warmer on the plains and less moisture. And so the white spruce kind of remained in the Black Hills where conditions were a little more favorable for it. And it's changed over time to be a little more adapted to plains conditions too. Less susceptible to the needle cast diseases. They can still get rhizopharynsthythmia but less susceptible. But the big thing is people like blue spruce and Black Hills are more green in color. So maybe we need to get used to a little green too but shorter needles on it, very small cones on it. Cones are only inch and a half, two inches long. So it's an attractive tree, very attractive tree. Meyer spruce as I mentioned is an Asian spruce and Northern Asian spruce has not been grown much at all in the Northern Plains. It's been trialed in a number of states. So far it's had good, very good cold hardiness. Much better resistance to the needle cast diseases. So hopefully it has resistance to those and it won't cross into them. It's got blunt rather than sharp-tipped needles. If you grab a Colorado spruce by the needles you feel it right away in those spines on the end of the needles. Meyer spruce, you can grab the needles. They're soft, not soft, but much softer. They don't have a tip on the end of it and don't end up hurting your hand. Height-wise, we don't know right now if it's gonna be 30, 40, 50 foot. We just have not grown them enough. Individual specimen, excuse me, out in the open looks very similar to Colorado spruce. It's got longer cones, longer than Black Hills, not quite as long as Colorado, but very similar trees. Aaron Bergdahl with North Dakota Forest Service has an interest in Meyer spruce. This is a mixed planting down in Ransom County here in North Dakota. And you can see there's Black Hills on the left and Meyer's on the right. Very similar growth rates, very similar habits. So hopefully that'll be a species that we can use a little bit more in the future. I mentioned Norway spruce. Norway spruce typically isn't used to a large degree in North Dakota. It's better adapted Minnesota, Wisconsin, and to the east. But NDSU does have a release, our selection in the release, called Royal Splendor Norway Spruce. And this is very different from the typical Norway spruce. This tree is much more upright, pure middle form to it. All the branches are upright, shorter needles. It doesn't have the drooping branches of Norway. If you're familiar with Norway spruce, they tend to get older, they have a drooping appearance. They look a little tired, but the Royal Splendor Spruce does not do that. This has become very popular with the wholesale nurseries on the west coast. And we go in every year to our tree with this lift. We go in and we take what are called scions from that tree. All these cultivars, our conifers that are cultivars are grafted. So we take hundreds of scions and the scion is essentially the short end of that new growth and that's what's grafted on rootstocks. So we'll send several hundred to a number of nurseries and they graft those, grow them for a number of years to get them up to size and then those are the trees that are distributed. There's a lot of odd spruce cultivars out there. So if you like something different in your yard, one of them that I'm starting to see show up is this pendula white spruce. It kind of has a wavy appearance with the weeping limbs on it. I am the red cone Norway. When the cones come out, on small plants even, they're producing little red cones on the end of it. And as I said, if you're interested in conifers and dwarf conifers, there are hundreds of them available that have some odd shape to them that are pretty distinct and neat if they're not overused in the landscape. Douglas fir is a tree that is just very rarely encountered in North Dakota. This is in a cemetery, a little town just west of Fargo, about 25 miles of Wheatland, North Dakota, if you know where Wheatland is. North side of Wheatland, there's a little cemetery there. As you drive by, you look at the cemetery and you think, oh, they've got it all planted with Colorado spruce, but actually most of the trees in this cemetery are Douglas fir. Douglas fir does not do well here. The seed sources we've tried have not performed well here. Well, here we have a cemetery full of Douglas fir. These trees were sent to them as a mistake in 1949. The cemetery board ordered Colorado spruce from a nursery in Colorado. What they got instead was Douglas fir by mistake, which is really a very fortuitous mistake for us because we're now using this as a seed source to grow these plants. This source is very winter hardy. It's adapted to the Northern Plains area. It is not susceptible to any of those spruce needlecast diseases. So here we have a whole different genera that hopefully we can grow. And we don't need to be concerned about the spruce needlecast diseases. Douglas fir does have some of his own problems, but there's not enough of them here to where any of those are occurring here right now. As I mentioned, these are being grown. Right now being grown as container seedlings by the town or state nursery. Itasca nursery over in Minnesota is also will be growing this source. So there should be a number of seedlings of this source available. Very, very similar to Colorado spruce informed, but not as blue. This is Colorado spruce on the right, but then you've got three Douglas fir here on the left. So growth rate and cemetery, very similar to Colorado spruce. We're probably asked about firs every year. What fir can we grow here? And we always say probably none. Firs do not do well here. And they're just, we have two dry conditions, drying winds, they winter sunburn extremely badly. I always tell them, if you're going to try to grow on here, place it on the north side of a belt or a home or something where the winter sun does not hit it. If you want to try it, the best choices are probably Minnesota sources and the balsam fir, which there are a few balsam fir around, and the trial of Siberian fir. This is typically what happens to fir in our part of the country. The needles are continuously burned on in open locations, off in open locations. This is a little fir that I've been watching for a couple of years. This is the Siberian fir that I mentioned. Again, one of those plants from Siberia, hardy to minus 50, 60, but it has not shown much of that winter burn, especially as a young plant, that you get on plants right adjacent to it, and you can see all these other burned sources of balsam fir. So it's one we can maybe try. Siberian fir is produced by a number of growers, so maybe a fir we can try in our climate here. Arborvita, everybody wants to grow arborvita, which is fine if you realize that at some point you're going to get winter burn on the foliage. They're very attractive plants, they're very dense, they're excellent for screening. Thuiaxudentalis is actually a native U.S. plant, but once we bring it out on the plains here, it starts getting some of those winter sunburn problems. There are a number of cultivars, and I've listed just the ones that are taller cultivars anywhere from, well, I went down to five foot, but most of these are above that. Some of these, I say 20 foot, they can even get greater than this. This is out of Absaraca, they're probably pushing 26, 28 foot in this row. There are a number of cultivars with that columnar form, Brandon and Pistigiata, Skybound Technene, Wariana. So they are available at different nurseries, but they are susceptible to winter burn, you want to water them in very well in the fall so that they have moisture. Here's what we generally see with arborvita, it looks like a lot of little Charlie Brown Halloween characters. People go out and cover them up each year to try to keep the sun off of them. The other big problem with it is deer brows, deer love arborvita, and of course the winter sunburn problem on them. So if you can put up with all of the problems and give them a good location, then you can probably keep them in good shape. Upright junipers, I'm not gonna talk about any of the creeping junipers at all, but more of the upright forms. And Eastern Red Cedar, Rocky Mountain Juniper are both native to North Dakota. Eastern Red more in the Eastern part, Rocky Mountain across central to the Western part of the state. Both of them are very drought and cold tolerant. Soil pH adaptable, they grow on. Soil pH is well up into the mid eighths. They're useful in mixed plantings, especially the upright ones, or as a screen planting where you might use an arborvita. If you're worried about winter burn, you could try some of the upright junipers instead. They just aren't as susceptible to arborvita. So when you say that, I'm sure somebody has some on it, but height 10 to 20 foot with three to eight foot on them. One of them that's gaining a lot of popularity is Taylor Eastern Red Cedar, which is very, very tight, very columnar, extremely columnar. The Dora Juniper was found in the Badlands in North Dakota. There's another cultivar from the Badlands called Sky High, then several other cultivars, Kala Green and Wichita Blue. So there's a number of upright junipers that we can use in the landscape. I was gonna throw Larch in here at the end. There's a said conifers are generally evergreen, but that's not true with all conifers. Larch are a deciduous conifer. They lose their needles every year. And so they grow back in the spring, much like any other deciduous tree in our landscape. They're very soft, attractive, foliage. They're very winter hardy, the Siberian and European species, very pH adaptable, but they're not as drought tolerant as as like some of the spruces or pines. Pyramidolin form, but you get cultivars that do everything that spruces do from weeping, vestigiate and dwarf. So the new growth, you can see the very soft new growth, spur type growth. They get the purplish cones in the spring and they make a nice tree, very much like a spruce type form actually. Just over at the ARS station, very bright green color in the summer. And then unfortunately this was a cloudy day when I took this picture, but a lemon yellow to gold in the fall. So very, very attractive tree that's really not used as much as it should be here. Somebody told me, well, they lose their needles every year. And I said, well, yeah, they lose them every year, but they grow back. You can plant a Colorado spruce, it will lose its needles and it won't grow back. So, you know, larches overcome some of that. So feel free to come out and visit us sometime. You can contact Dr. West or myself with these email addresses and pretty much on any conifers, deciduous trees you want to know about. So thank you very much. We do have time for a few questions out there. Well, Greg, you talked about larches. Would you recommend large trees for a windbreak? Large trees for a windbreak, again, losing the needles in the winter kind of negates some of that winter effect of the windbreak. If you wanted it for a summer effect, then certainly, they would be fine for that. But maybe in a mixed windbreak where you've got several conifer species and shrub species, they'd be fine for that. For a windbreak, worse evergreen. For a windbreak, well, yeah. Well, I mean, it gives you some wind protection, but surely not as much as other evergreens. As other conifers, I talk properly here. How about, Greg, won't it be a good conifer for a sheltered adult that's along a river that occasionally floods? Can't they know it's evolving? Yeah, conifers generally are intolerant of flooding. Some of the arborvita may be a little more tolerant of moist soils, but in our area, we really don't have conifers that tolerate flooding that well. I guess I would plant other deciduous species. How about, okay, got a lot of large love here. What's the difference between a European and a Siberian large? European large, side by side, it's a little bit different in the cones, a little bit different in the hardiness with Siberian being a little hardier. Siberian is a little more tolerant to some of the conditions that we have here. Very similar if you look at them side by side. I think it'd be hard to tell them apart for most people, but for a tougher site or a colder site, Siberian would be the nod over the European, I guess. Greg, should I rake the needles underneath my conifer every year? Raking needles under conifers drives me nuts. I would rather see a bed under a conifer and let the needles fall and accumulate. Those needles actually provide protection for that real system and moisture retention. I know a lot of people like to clean them all up each year, but I would just leave them like and develop a bed underneath it. How about, can I use an upright juniper as a substitute for an arborvide or are they just as susceptible to winter sunburn? Upright junipers are much less susceptible to winter sunburn. If you want a screen, it depends on what part of the state you're in. In the eastern part of the state, the eastern red cedar upright cultivars like Taylor do better. As you move west, you can use Taylor once again, but some of the Rocky Mountain upright cultivars do better to the west of us than in this area with more humidity. But yeah, they can be used on tougher sites than arborvide and perform the same function or provide just as nice a screen. How about red pines? What's your feeling about them? Red pines are not adapted to North Dakota. You occasionally find one. They're adapted to much, much lower pH soils and tend to winter sunburn very badly. It's an 80th temperature to the east of us and should be left to the east of us. Okay, we'll do that. How about the stone pines grow as fast as the ponderosa pine? The growth rate on stone pines is much slower, which actually I prefer, so that they are a little more in tune with the landscape. Ponderosa pine can grow quite rapidly and you can actually put a lot of candle growth out that will, so much candle growth that can break in a windstorm or by birds sitting on it. The stone pine don't put out that much growth each year. So growth rate is much less. Tough evergreen that can grow well in a very shallow rocky soil. Any of the rocky mountain juniper cultivars, eastern red cedar cultivar, ponderosa pine is native to those areas. How close can you plant a conifer to the home foundation? Yeah, any of these I would move out from a foundation, at least six, eight foot at a minimum. It depends on the conifer, a smaller conifer, you can get a little closer. As I mentioned, things like Colorado spruce, we tend to put too close. We quickly overwhelm the planting site. They're probably concerned about roots against the foundation. I don't know that the conifers are gonna be as heavy a root system into a foundation, but just getting them away from the house is the best thing. Do you have any experience with a weeping Norway spruce? Or is that a sad story? Yes, weeping Norway are very sad. No, there are weeping cultivars of Norway and there are actually several that do fairly well here. There are some small ones that only get mid-range size and then larger ones and they tend to do pretty well. What do you think about growing these stone pine trees and harvesting the pine nuts? That would be great if you've got about 30, 40 years to wait. It's okay, and they're beautiful. They take a long time to reach reproductive maturity. Okay, doesn't sound like a plan. How about the Myers spruce handle the winter burn conditions and the drought? Myers spruce to this point, and this is only with 10 years of looking at them, have done very well with minimal winter burning. And then that's one of those things is we get more of them out. Inplantings will be able to determine that. At this point, they look good though. They don't appear to be as drought tolerant, side by side maybe as Colorado spruce if you needed more drought tolerance, but any spruce really shouldn't be in that extreme droughty situation. You know, getting back to those pine nuts, we got a lot of nuts out there and they taste as good as a pinion nut. You ever had a stone nut? I have, they do, the typical pine nut taste and oftentimes, especially stores, you can buy Siberian stone pine nuts. The limber pine in the southeast part or southwest part of North Dakota is also a small nut producing pine and they taste the same too. Okay, I see a conifer from a distance that looks almost black. What is it? It's hard to say. Yeah, it's this day or night. Okay, how about this? What's a good time to remove a conifer branch? A branch? It really doesn't matter on conifers. If it's bothering you right now, then go out and remove it. The saw is sharp and the body is willing. Yes. Okay. The snow has melted. Okay, any last question? Oh, sorry. You know, for that arborvita, it's winter burn sensitive. Should we cover that with burlap over winter? What do you think about that? Yeah, the burlap on arborvita, if you wanna go to the work of doing it each year, a lot of people do. They do cover them. That works so far until they gradually get too large to do it, but instead of wrapping it tightly, kind of just more loosely around it, or put stakes in before the ground freezes and wrap kind of just a protective layer around those stakes instead of tying up your tree like it's gonna get away or something. Yeah, that's why arborvita really suffer from the winter winds. Okay, great. My ponderosa pine's got holes in the trunk. What's going on? Nope, what do you get? Sapsuckers. Sapsuckers, no answer. All the case. Sapsuckers or woodpeckers? I mean, do a bot it. Nothing. That's right. You know, if it comes extremely bad, then you've got some sort of larva underneath there that the woodpeckers are going for, and you may need to have it looked at at that point, but it's occasional holes, and it's typical. Stop that if you can though, right, because it can girdle the tree. Yeah, I could have done that, but you'll just fight back and just scare the woodpecker so it moves to the neighbor's tree. That's what I recommend. There's a lot of questions about that ad-serac field tour. Do you know, like, do you know the date by any chance? Don't have a date for this year. It's generally in August. We would like to have it in September, but it will be again, and usually we let the extension offices know and try to get it out through the system. Tour per year. Is that right? Yeah. Yes, you've got a group that wants to come out and will certainly do a tour for you. So if you've got a Master Gardener group or 4-8th group or whatever group that you may have, certainly, Todd or I will meet you out there and show you the area and let you loose after we talk about it a little bit, and you can spend a whole day out there easily, just walking around looking at trees. Okay, I don't make a plan. Okay.