The Wisconsin Gardener

cc Well, we're still in the Mesozoic but now we're talking about living fossil trees you can grow in your own backyard. I'm at Klehm's Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery in Avalon, Wisconsin. I'm with the vice-president, Roy Klehm. Good morning. We are looking at living fossil trees. The first one to me that always comes to mind is the Ginkgo. This was at it's height in the Mesozoic. And it's still popular today. Exactly. Beautiful, thick, textured leaves with a little bit of cut in the leaf. This variety is called Jade Butterflies. I think it looks like a little butterfly. Ginkgo are monospecific species. That means there's only one species in the whole world. So these are all Ginkgo biloba. This is that's left from millions of years ago. It's all that's left, yes. Disease and insect immune. We've never seen anything on ginkgo in my lifetime. In the literature, there's nothing ever recorded of any insect or any disease. That makes it high on my list. Oh, it's a great garden plant. A little slower growing. The slowest growing one we have... Speaking of slow growing. Is a variety called Troll. This comes from a Witches Broom. That means part a mature plant, the cells inverted and they became dwarf by nature. These were propagated off of that original dwarf plant. This will only get about three feet high in ten years maybe 2-1/2 feet wide. So it's like a true mutation. It's a true mutation, they're called Witches Brooms. It's beautiful and very cute, too. Then there's a variegated form, a beautiful variegated leaf. They look they're painted, don't they? This has the same cut in the middle of the leaf. But this will grow a little bit slower too because the plant has less ability to make chlorophyll because of the yellow. If a green shoot comes up, edit those out. So prune them off. Because all the energy will go to the green shoot and you'd lose your variegation. This is called Majestic Rainbow. I love that one. These were at the height in the Mesozoic but at the end of the Mesozoic, flowering plants came in. One of the first ones was another living fossil Magnolias. We're lucky to have a blooming magnolia this morning. This is the sieboldi Magnolia. A little nodding white flower, very fragrant. Beautiful. If you want to try it. Isn't that luscious? Oh, I'd like that outside my window! It has a little pink center to it. Beautiful pink reproductive parts in the center of the flower. You look at that, and as the seed head gets bigger you start to get a sense of how primitive these plants are. It's right there, just starting. Yeah, I mean they're very cool looking the seed pods themselves. People think these are very tender and they're not. They're very hardy. Sieboldi is rated for Plant Zone 4 actually. In my garden, I've never seen any winter damage on sieboldi. We're trying to breed other magnolias that are really hardy into Plant Zone 4 We have large-leafed ones like this. They'll get pretty big. If I wanted a shade tree, stick with the large leaf. Oh, yeah. The smaller-leafed ones like this are more shrubby and more dwarf, and better foundation plants. They generally have Star Magnolia blood in them where the flowers look like little stars in the spring. Again, throughout most of Wisconsin, maybe not Zone 3. Zone 5 for sure, Zone 4 probably you can grow them. We've got another living fossil but you've got a new living fossil first to look at. This is a rare weeping form of the Dawn Redwood called Miss Grace. You tie this leader up to get height to it. You let all the side branches hang down because they're pendulous. You'll have a little, like, I don't know just a sort of soft textured garden plant. All Metasequoias, of course, are deciduous conifers so it'll lose these leaves in the winter. If we grow something like this it's an evergreen that's going to lose it's leaves. Don't panic. Don't panic, right. By the way, there's a very nice yellow fall color on Metasequoia or Dawn Redwood. That's true, it's beautiful. This is the original living fossil. This is the original, yes. They actually thought that Dawn Redwoods Metasequoias had died out, were extinct. Yes, until 1941, when a Chinese scientist found a little grove of them in China. Finally I think about in 1945 or '46, American scientists were allowed to go to China and pick the seeds and take the seeds into different gardens and arboretums. Okay, and this is a little bit more tender? It could be. I've seen nice ones at Longenecker in Madison. I think there's probably different hardiness on the different seedlings that came here so it's a provenance thing. It's worth trying, because it's a beautiful plant. It gets tall and lacy. It'll take a wet condition. Oh, good. It has very nice opposite leaf structure here. One leaf is opposite of the other. On a Bald Cypress, which is similar to this they're alternate where the leaf would be alternate on the stem. This is another deciduous conifer. It can take a wet area. Mulch it really well, and it has a very nice chance of being a really nice cornerstone to your garden. So with any of these, any time you have a young tree take good care of it the first couple years. Oh, yeah, baby it for a while and it'll pay dividends. Okay, well hey, good start for my living fossil garden. Thanks, Roy.