Le Sat, 2 Jan 2010 08:32:22 -0800, "TMS" a écrit :

This tree was bought as a 12" "living Christmas tree" by my daughter in
December of 2008. She had no place to transplant it after the holidays,
and, rather than discard it, she gave it to me to plant in my back yard.
Much to my surprise the new growth was not spruce, but pbvious pine needles.
There is no evidence of any grafting. The original lower portion of the tree
remains healthy spruce, but all new growth is pine, including sme pine
needles growing on the orinal spruce branches, as seen the the photographs.
No one to whom I have shown the tree has rational any explanation for this
phenomenon, and I am curious to learn what the explanation might be for such
a transition. Is this (1) unusual, (2) reasonably common, or (3) totally
bizarre?

Here are the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10531633@N00/

This is the normal way of growing of some pine species (not all).
Juvenile foliage is different.
For example here in France we have Stone pine (Pinus pinea) that
typically grows that way : from seedling to 2 or 3 years old the young
plant looks like the one shown on your pictures, with blueish foliage.
Needles are not arranged by pairs or not grouped by 3 or 5 as they are
normally for pines but disposed all around the shoot.
After a while, about 3 years or so, juvenile foliage is not produced
anymore and the pine finally starts looking like a pine !

Olivier
--
http://nothofagus.free.fr
http://florenligne.free.fr