Abies koreana "Ice Breaker"

Kievnstavick

Shohin
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Kitsap County, Washington State, USA
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Welcome wanderers to my exploration of a witch's broom from a Korean Fir. As far as I could tell, I did not see a graft unless the witch's broom has consumed the original graft.
I acquired this tree from a local nursery. Within the first year, I cleaned the tree up a bit. Removing some unwanted foliage. I also visualized my target pot.
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Later that same year, It got a bad case of spider mites that I caught quite late. So my repotting plans were put on hold.
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Kievnstavick

Shohin
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Here is the tree back in January of 2023. I cleaned up the clearly dead branches and made some into dead wood. I left them a little blunt for now and plan on making them look more natural in the future. I also was over zealous in my application of cut paste to seal the cuts as best as possible to reduce the bleeding.
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Kievnstavick

Shohin
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At the end of April I noticed that I had quite a few healthy buds. As I knew that the pot was already pretty full with roots, I figured it would be better to perform a slip pot into a just slightly larger container. I also shortened some wrap around roots, Taking care to disturb the root ball as little as possible. I also took the time to excavate the nebari so that I had a better idea of what I was working with.
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jszg

Mame
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Korean fir is a really nice species- the cones are amazing, and it strikes me as a strong-growing, handsome tree. It might be grafted onto wild-type korean fir, although my understanding is that most commercial growers use Abies firma as the rootstock. I think the line at the rootbase is due to the graft, which might smooth out when the tree grows a little thicker.
 

Kievnstavick

Shohin
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Now that you meantion it, I can see it pretty clearly now. I guess I'm just used to very obvious and ugly grafts.

My only clue initially was an old pruned branch low on the trunk line that looked like it healed weird.
 

Cruiser

Chumono
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Nice foliage. It has that freshly snowed-upon look.
The grafts on these usually look worse than yours.
If it gets to be too much, you could always carve through it on one side.
 

Kievnstavick

Shohin
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Late Summer update: (Work performed 04-AUG-23)
While doing some minor work clearing out dead branches and inspecting it, I noticed some dead portions of the trunk line. So I followed the thread, removing the dead portions until I hit live tissue. The dead wood spirals up the tree for a good majority of its current height, but the lower section is the largest chunk. I kissed the surfaces with a butane torch to remove the fuzzies and cut lines from my knife. I then brushed it down with a brass brush. I covered as much of the live tissue as I could with some cut putty as I was fearful of some heavy bleeding. My control of the flame was not as precise as I was hoping. A few of the inner needles got burnt, but overall the tree survive into fall just fine. In the future I will probably figure out how to make a heat shield with on hand materials in order to protect the tree better.
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Here is my current idea for a front, but as the tree is still quite early on in the process.
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These are the other sides of the tree captured at approximately 90 degree rotations.

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