Specimen 1, part shade
2010 early Spring

2011 mid Summer

2012 late Spring

Specimen 2, originally bought as 'Silberkugel', though it appeared to be ball-shape originally, it flattened out. Note that it was moved this Winter to give the other two friends a little more space.

2009(Winter)

2010 - no image

2011 mid-Summer

2011 Winter(after move)

2012 late Spring

-Will
Thanks in advance, Edwin.

Can you elaborate on the difference between 'Kristallkugel' and 'Silberkugel', and how you determined that your 'Silberkugel' was actually 'Kristallkugel'?

Enjoyable set of pictures, it's a lovely plant. Did you build your stone walls yourself?

Alex

Alex, I didn't discover it, Edwin and Henk graced my gardens with a visit(and a scion knife! :) ) and they made several corrections of plant mislabeling in person. I remember them saying 'Kristallkugel' is generally more flat topped whereas 'Silberkugel' is more ball shaped. I'll need Edwin to chime in with definitions for both but I believe 'Silberkugel' is something like 'Silver Ball or Silver Globe' in German, to which is appears more like then the flat topped 'Kristallkugel'.

Because this thread may gain some legs and Edwin can add a lot of photos, I'll add a few awesome specimens, credit to Bob Fincham, Coenosium Gardens.

Abies koreana 'Kristallkugel' - Almost like a discuss or frisbee with age, a flat-topped mound.

Abies koreana 'Silberkugel' - Much more rounded and formal, perhaps ala Abies koreana 'Cis'.

You are right indeed Alex, it's a marvelous plant, but to see this mature specimen in Bob's garden is to truely lust to grow it.

The stones are mostly pulled from the landscape as I dug holes and I ended up building a winding dry creek bed in the backyard with the larger stones as the sides. Thanks for your kind words!

Edwin can correct any errors I might have, as though my collection is large, my experience is still small.

-Will

In the meantime also this one reached the U.S. under both names.
Now comes the strange part: It was the Wittboldt-Mueller Nursery from Germany who received some U.S. scions of an unnumed dwarf Korean fir, or he was forgotten the name, which is also possible.
Kurt Wittboldt-Mueller gave it the temporary name 'W.M. 006318 Am' which means "Wittbold-Mueller, some number, America".
My Dutch friend Wiel Linssen visited this nursery and took home one small specimen of this dwarf.
A few years later Wiel had propagated a nice amound of it and called Kurt to think of a proper name and together they gave it the name 'Kristallkugel' which means 'Chrystal Globe' in English.

In this way the 'Kristallkugel' led it's own life and nobody knew it's true name...
In my Pinetum I've all species grouped together, also the Korean firs and several times I had in mind that some looked very simular.
My personal observations and detective work together brought me to the following conclusion:

Totaly this dwarf Korean fir does have 5 names:
-'Gruebele'
-'Doni-Tajuso'
-'W.M. 006318 Am'
-'Kristallkugel'
-'Crystal Globe'

The final conclusion now is that the original name is 'Gruebele' and that all the other ones must be renamed back into this name.
In my personal database I wrote:
Abies koreana 'Gruebele' aka 'W.M. 006318 Am', 'Crystal Globe', 'Doni-Tajuso', 'Kristallkugel'.

I'm aware now that I put a lot of people into work...

Are you just going with personal observation of the cultivars in question, or is there more evidence? This stuff just fascinates me. As always, thanks for your insight; don't ever leave this group; you are way too valuable.

~Dave

There are only a few original Korean fir witches' brooms and most of them were found in the 80ties in Germany. ('Silberperle', 'Silberkugel' and 'Gruebele')
As scions come and go from Europe to the U.S. and got some name changes in the meanwhile it all comes to look to the origianal one's and start to compare with the other one's.
Then you'll see that the original one is the 'Gruebele' in this case and the others ('Doni-Tajuso', 'Kristallkugel' and 'Chrystal Globe' are just copies...

For all clarity:
I had this name confusion thing in my mind for the last 3 years and started to graft them all in the same time and looked how they developed in grow rate, time of flushing, needle length, needle colour, etc.
ALL ('Gruebele', 'Doni-Tajuso' and 'Kristallkugel' were showing the same in characteristics.
('W.M. 006318 Am' was just a temporary name and 'Crystal Globe' is just a translated name from German to English.)

Probably I'm the only one in the World who's surching so deep to find the evidence to solve todays conifers questions/problems and also this time I'm very sure that I'm right.
Otherwise I'm waiting for somebody to prove me that I'm wrong :0)

Great work, I promote you to Chief Luitenant Conifer Investigator Edwin Smits. :)

-Will

Zsolt, this must be great info for you to :0)

However, I am confused as to how it is possible for the dwarf sent to Wittboldt-Mueller Nursery from America could possibly be the same plant as the witch's broom found in Germany, 'Gruebel'...

Unless, you mean to imply that, after 'Gruebel' was introduced to the U.S., scions of the same plant were sent back to Germany and renamed to 'Kristallkugel'. Is this the case? Or how is it possible that they are one and the same cultivar?

Here are some pictures of the plant I purchased as Abies koreana 'Kristallkugel':

Thank you again.

-Sam

It's the case like you said: The 'Gruebele' was found in Germany, went to U.S. under this name and returned back unnamed to Germany were it got the name 'Kristallkugel'.

The same story is for Sciadopitys verticillata 'Sternschnuppe' which was found in Germany, went to the U.S. under this name and came back to Europe under the name 'Green Star'...

Enjoyed the info and the photos of course (Will).

I have a little baby that could only aspire to be the specimens shown here.

Storytime has just begon, a lot more will follow...