The importance of matching forest tree seed source with reforestation site

Would you plant a rosebush on the top of a snow-clad mountain? Would you plant one at timberline where even the indigenous trees are valuable only for non-timber purposes? Or would you plant your rosebush in an environment where it has a good chance of normal growth? Most foresters today would give the right answers to these questions. However, same continue to ignore the fact that early reforestation efforts in the northwest contain numerous instances of plantation failures due to moving seed into hostile environments. Foresters should look first in their own back yards to improve both growth rate and quality of the product, rather than use seed from non-local sources. John S. Boyce in "Forest Pathology" expressed this philosophy many years ago: "Provided that plantations are established on suitable sites, of species adapted to the locality, with stock grown from seed from the proper locality and from thrifty mother trees,..., then such plantations should develop almost as well as naturally reproduced stands." We now know that if seed is collected from the best mother trees and the other criteria are observed, plantations should develop better than naturally reproduced stands.

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Author(s): Thomas E. Greathouse

Publication: National Nursery Proceedings - 1978