Most of the conifers the damage looks pretty superficial, except for Retrophyllum minor - is that one of the complete losses, or do you think it might recover?

Guess there's also a risk some might have had their cambium killed close to the ground and they'll only show as dead by the summer.

How cold did it get? -5°C? -10°C?

Resin

Hi Dave and Resin:

Dave, looks as if you did fairly well; much better than your much colder inland neighbors. Agathis lanceolata, moorei and microstachya got severely, perhaps terminally damaged as did Araucaria hunsteinii. The unknown RSBG Araucaria(rulei?) got severely nipped and would have perished if it had been in a less sheltered location.

All this as we are licking our wounds from the hottest summer ever with losses of Austrocedrus chilensis, Saxothegea, Halocarpus bidwillii and others.

I've got quite a few brown spots in the garden; but, just more opportunities to plant!

Cheers,

Frank

Resin,

There is a little bit of green in the Retrophyllum, but the danged plant grows so painfully slowly, that I wonder if it will have the "get-up-and-go" to recover from so much loss of chlorophyll. Yes, that is one of the ones I think I will ultimately lose. Fortunately, I shared material from this and other clones with botanical gardens before the freeze, so I hope to replace it. It's a tough one to grow, as it likes to have its feet wet, and wohnt tolerate dry, cracked soils (common california summer situation for me).

As far as the others go, they have all initiated new growth and show no signs of collaps (we actually has a couple of warm enough days for sap to rise, so I think plants that are destined to become compost will have already shown their collapse).

It's not how cold it got that caused this freeze to be unusual. It was the length of night time freezing that was unusual, combined with the number of days this continued, back-to-back. We had between -4C and -5C for over 12 hours, for five nights in a row. Every winter we go down once or twice to that level for an hour, maybe two, just before sunrise, for maybe a day or two, before night-time temps moderate. This was an unrelenting freeze, that went on, day after day, and it was not liked by my tropical stuff.

David

What other New caledonian conifers came through that
could spell as im keen on trying some New caledonian
conifers here.

Vitrually all my Agathis and Araucarias came through fine. One (A. laubenfelsii, I think) had damage to the growing tips, but that wont be a problem down the road). All of these plants were quite large (20 feet or so), so I think that had something to do with it. None of these had any protection of any kind.

The Dacrydiums showed good freeze resistance as well, although Dacrydium beccarii is looking a bit peaked lately. Dacrydium lycopodioides suffered damage to the apical lead, and isn't looking especially happy, but I am hopeful it will come through. Dacrydium balansae did quite well for some reason. Retrophyllum comptonii did better than its sibling, R. minor, but it, too was scorched at the tips.

For those of us who need it the Farenheit equivalent of -5C is 23.