Years ago I received it under the name Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen' which it isn't.
After a little investigation I found out that it was the Horstmann Nursery that gave this name to the wrong plant.
The true name of this little one is Picea glauca 'Little Globe'.

There's a true Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen' aka 'H.B.' which came in the trade as Picea rubra 'Hexenbesen'.
This isn't the same one as 'Grandfather Mountains'.

For comparison :

I'm happy to show 2 rare conifers, Picea rubens have few cultivars.
Clément

I also have another plant under the name Picea glauca 'Little Globe', and it isn't the same as this one. I'm also pretty sure my other 'Little Globe' is the correct plant. I'll post a photo of that one as soon as I can for comparison.

I'll take a photo of Picea glauca 'Little Globe' over the weekend Edwin,

I can't hardly wait! ;0)

As promised Edwin...here are the two plants in question, photos taken today for comparison...Picea glauca 'Little Globe' and Picea glauca/rubens 'Hexenbessen'

They look different to me!


Josh

So! ...I assume they are not the same, and another name is appropriate for the Picea rubens 'Hexenbessen' ?

Not so fast with your conclusion Stephen!
First of all, it's not 'Hexenbessen' but 'Hexenbesen'.

Indeed, they don't look the same but I like to investigate some time in it what the 'Hexenbesen' realy is.

The problem all started with the wrong labeled Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen' which is in reality a Picea glauca cultivar.

If I compare both (from Stephen and Clément) the photo's of the 'Little Globe' then these look the same and this one is true to the name.

The problem raised at the Horstmann Nursery. Uwe Horstmann mixed up the Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen' and the Picea glauca 'Hexenbesen' aka 'Hexenbesen Uwe' aka 'Hexe'.
Clément does have the 'Hexe' in his collection but unfortunately the pic at his website doesn't show up.
Maybe he can show us this pic directly here at this toppic for comparesing...

My opinion now is that the "stranger" is Picea glauca 'Hexenbesen' aka 'Hexenbesen Uwe' aka 'Hexe'.

Thought that might get a response Edwin ;o)
and i know it's Hexenbesen! not Hexenbessen..just me being careless...My point is, that it's highly unlikely to be the same as Picea glauca 'Little Globe', so we don't want it wrongly identified again do we! ? so yes! as you say a new name seems to be appropriate.

Edwin, do you know the history of Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen?'

It appears that with the exeption of 'Pocono' all cultivars are Picea rubens were found by Europeans and immediately brought home and are rarely seen growing in American soil.

Same with 'Grandfather Mountain' / 'Grandfather Mountains.' The name of the place in North Carolina is "Grandfather Mountain." Was it Uwe Horstmann or Jörg Kohout who found this one? Was it named with or without the final "s." Of course this is extremely important. In the German language, possessive clause is done without the apostrophe. Is this what's going on here?

The RHS horticultural database also lists Picea rubens 'Charlotte's Pillow' and 'Shane.' Do you know these plants? I have never seen them.

~Dave

A part of the problems are, that Horstmann never gave names that time. Just HB, Hexenbesen, Horstmann, Horstmann HB etc. He thought that time WBs were so rare, they need no special names. Now after 10000 WBs may disturb the general taxonomy. I expect, that the never named WB-s of Horstmann will be buried after a while, as nobody knows them surely. I tried to connect several times with Uwe, but no answers.
This is not my problem.

By my side:
(No idea about comparisons between P. glauca and rubens) Lets see P. rubens, what I have:

Grandfarther Mountains - 1979 Horstmann in Grandfather mountains.
Hexe - listed at Malik, Frantisek Topinka gave a photo earlier
Hexenbesen Horstmann - same as Grandfather Mountains.

I have about 11 photos in the conifertreasury, please have a look at them. I must think now, that they are possibly the same on different names.

Zsolt

Not that it sheds any new daylight, but this specimen looks identical, almost to the year, of the specimen that Clément is showing above.

Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen'

-Will

Zsolt is right about the late Günter Horstmann, he named all his witches' brooms just 'Hexenbesen'.
This is because he was one of the first witches'broom hunters in the world, he was a real pioneer and from a lot of conifer genus and species he found the first witches' brooms, so naming them just 'hexenbesen' was enough because at that time there was no need to give them a proper cultivar name.

I don't know why and when, but some time later on Mr. Horstmann renamed the Picea rubens 'Hexenbesen' into Picea rubens 'Grandfather Mountains'.
This is a very slow growing broom with a greenblue colour.

Maybe this was done because he found another one which he also named 'Hexenbesen'.
This is the much faster growing one with a green needle colour which we can see at Clément's and Will's pics.

Picea rubens 'Charlotte's Pillow' and 'Shane' were found in Canada.

This post was edited by coniferjoy on Sat, Nov 30, 13 at 3:03

This is very helpful information, Edwin. Thank you. It's really crazy that there are two Picea rubens out there that might be called 'Hexenbesen.' It's still very important for me to see 'Grandfather Mountains' growing in his home country again.

~Dave

This June I met with Gary Gee at Maliks conifer meeting. I suggested him to repatriate hundreds of american broom found earlier by europeans. These people are of course not bad guys who rubbed out the States.
Mr. Malik has almost all brooms fount by europeans in America, about 300. They are all published in conifertreasury.org.

2004 and 2006 Franz Etzelstorfer and Jorg Kohout visited Jerry Morris in Colorado. They hunted some days together, but later Franz and Jorg went alone to other states. They found big serieses of Pinus aristata, longaeva, balfouriana, monophylla, Abies lasiocarpa and many others.Vojtech Holubec and Sevcik of CZ brought to Europe about 30-40 pine brooms. Henk and Edwin hunted in the north with Joe Braeu and Josh Horky several times, they may reach 40-60 brooms of Minnesota and sorrounds.

Franz and Jorg collected about 40-60 brooms in Russia and China, 50-70 brooms in Greece and Bulgaria.Josef Halda collected over 60 brooms in Greece, Jorg also many in Macedonia and Bulgaria.
Czech hunters found 30 mugo brooms in Germany organized by Malik, further 40 in Poland. Czechs found about 150 cembras in Austria together with Franz sometimes. Franz found 70 mugo brooms in Cesko.
Gunther Eschrich found almost 100 brooms, half of them in Spain, Morocco, Schweiz, Holland, Hungary, France. Our good friend Jan Slama collects often in Slovakia, in the last years Jiri Trojan collects in Poland, Valenta collects since ages in the Russian Far-East.

Realizing this big international brooming crossovers I decided a new kind of documentation. If a foreigner finds what anywhere, these brooms count to 2 countries. One for the hunter's country and one where it was found. I think its correct.

I think many are seeking for relatively rare specieses, which are not well detected, or the collections are full of Picea abies brooms. I must say to be a broom hunter must be well educated, must be able to recognize any kind of brooms. They all need a good knowledge and their knowledge stops not at country borders.

Zsolt
conifertreasury.org

Part 2

Generally I used to use statistics to know where we are, what kind of trends for the future. I can tell you that conifering is now still in the middle of the broom revolution. Breeders are going to collect broom of even the most rare specieses. This shows me, we may be about the peak in deriving by masses, and started a way for quality specialization.

Me and my author friends published 13 national conifer books in the last 4-5 years. This books could have been realized by digging deep, catching the conifer breeders. Half of these countries never thought, that they are so rich in conifers. We came to an unknown future's possibility.

I see unexpected possibilities.
Some day New Caledonians will collect their beautiful Podocarpus brooms in their forests, Australians may find hundreds of brooms, varieties of their own conifers, South-Africans will collect Podocarpaceae in their land, Malaysians, indonesians, vietmanes, chinese or anybody else start to collect their own.

We have to prepare to be opened to accept all, what nature gives.

Mexicans may collect Pinus culminicola brooms or Picea chihuahuana brooms, argentinians, chileans may collect Araucarias, people of the Norfolk Islanders may enjoy Araucaria heterophylla brooms... etc.

Are you ready to accept these all?

Zsolt
conifertreasury.org

After a little research, I found the guy responsible for bringing 'Charlotte's Pillow' and 'Shane' into the world. His name is Bill Journeay and he lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. I attached a link to an ACS Conifer Quarterly where he wrote an article in 2009. I fear that none of his plants have yet been propagated which is a tragedy. I just sent out a couple of messages to try to reach out to him to see if this oversight can be corrected. Wish us luck. He has found some really cool things.

~Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Bill Journeay findings

I know this article. First I took the first into my lists, but later I saw, there has been no propagations. A not propagated plant is nothing, this is the problem, just a promise. Its nothing else, that a man went to the forest with a camera, meanwhile the plants looks very good. As they will be propagated, I take them to the lists.
Zsolt

What are the differences between Picea abies 'Little Gem Extra' and Picea abies 'Little Gem'? Whether there is a photo?

None, the "Extra" is a normal 'Little Gem' growing in very poor circumstances which is the cause of it's smaller needles...

The photo which can be found via google was taken by a friend of mine.

This post was edited by coniferjoy on Thu, Dec 5, 13 at 15:34

Thank you, he just could not say. So I will look for this form 'Extra'. )))