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Home → Publications → Tree Planters' Notes → Tree Planters' Notes Volume 21, Number 3 (1970) → Potential Seed Production From a White Spruce Clonal Seed Orchard

Potential Seed Production From a White Spruce Clonal Seed Orchard

One objective of tree improvement programs is mass production of genetically superior seed. Such seed is usually collected in grafted or in seedling seed orchards from selected trees. White spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) is widely planted in the Lake States, and seed orchards are now being established to produce genetically superior seed. What will these orchards yield? We present here some early answers to this question. Our results are limited to clonal orchards. Wright (1964) reported that moderate numbers of cones can be found occasionally on 6- to 10-year-old white spruce and that most trees produce cones in quantity by the time they are 10 to 15 years old. Planted white spruce in northeastern Wisconsin apparently do not produce moderate cone crops until they are much older. For example, in an unfertilized planting of trees 21 years old from seed, only 10 out of 23 selected trees could be included in a pollination program requiring a minimum of 10 pollination bags per tree .


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Author(s): Hans Nienstadet, Richard M. Jeffers

Publication: Tree Planters' Notes - Volume 21, Number 3 (1970)

Volume: 21

Number: 3