Can you tell us what is unique about each one or is it not known until it begins to mature?

I'm just curious and tyring to understand all these brooms and the various names.

Some weeks ago I visited a broom garden in Cesko, where finding them is a kind of national sport. They have about 2000 registered spruce brooms overall in the country. This quantity is good enough to think after the remarkable rasses among them. This story tell us somewhat about the conifer genetics.

The owner of the garden planted 5 nice different high grafted brooms, and my friend started to name them. Picea abies, picea omorika, picea glauca, picea pungens, picea asperata etc. I told him: stop please, these are all Picea abies, even green, blue, goldie or anything else.

I guess that the brooms of the Picea abies contain their history, as they form very different rasses. It looks like, that Picea abies is the original dawn spruce, which remains the old times variability of the spruces. Practically the Picea abies could be the mother of all later spruces. Maybe this sounds a bit strange, but the picea abies brooms "know" also today the dividing procedure, as later species were divided of the dawn spruce.

Thats why I'm interested in brooms, and if they are quite nice too, we all win what. A nice plant or even some ideas about the conifer genetics.

Pinus mugo is also a well discovered species with about 2000 detected brooms. Pinus cembra is now at 160 known brooms, but by time it could be much more, hopely a matter of future genetic surveys.

Till that time I try to enjoy the sights of the nice brooms, which are as different as they can be. Later on I will connect here elder grafts, where the differences are more visible by time.

Zsolt

There isn't one of those I don't NOT like!

Dax