Bags of Sitka spruce cones at Newton Nursery
Images courtesy of Alan Duncan, Newton Nursery.
One of the stores at Newton Nursery filled with sacks of Sitka spruce cones which have been gathered from various forest stands in North East Scotland.
During the 1970s and 80s the import of conifer tree seed from USA and Canada was largely superseded by home collections of tree seed from forests in UK. The early large bulk imports of Sitka spruce and certain provenances of Lodgepole pine were running low and in the1980s an effort was made to organise nation wide collections of species such as Sitka spruce, North Coastal and Alaskan Lodgepole pine along with the usual collections such as Hybrid larch, European larch and Scots pine.
The critical aim was to locate high quality stands of the correct species and provenance from which to attempt collections. (Provenance refers to geographic localities from where the seed originated. For example Sitka spruce naturally grows from Alaska down to Washington State and over the range exhibits widely differing characteristics some of which are not desirable in this country). At the time local foresters were asked to look through their forests and identify all the best stands of various required species which were of an ideal coning age and condition. They also had to locate, as far as possible, the old planting records (sometimes 30-50 years old) which detailed the nursery and the identification number of the seed from which the stands were initially planted. It was also useful to look at the records to show how much replacement of dead trees was carried out (Beating Up) and again which seed identity numbers were used.
Following the location of certain high quality stands with good historical records, foresters from Tree Improvement Branch (Mike Phillips from Newton) would visit, inspect and confirm if it should used as a seed collecting source. If so, it was mapped, recorded and issued with a GB seed identity number. If the historical records were missing but it still looked a very high quality stand a more detailed visual assessment was made, nursery seed sowing records for the year it was planted checked and again if all looked well, registration carried out. This process applied to all species from which national collections were made. Exceptions of course were seed orchards and seed banks where only proven high quality tree species were planted and already registered for collections.
Good seed years are cyclical and variable, occurring every 3-6 years and it was the local forester job to check the plantations in spring for early sign of a heavy coning year. If signs were very good an Area Seed Liaison Forester (Norman Davidson – Shin Forest) was appointed who checked progress of coning and ripening over a number of locations and helped local foresters organise collections. In the case of Sitka spruce many of the seed stands were programmed for thinning or felling anyway and being held back (with great difficulty!) for the advent of a good mast year. Fellers would go in and fell some of the heaviest coning trees and leave them for the contract cone gatherers to pick over. Often as not the cone gathers had to follow normal forest felling or thinning operations timed for optimum cone ripeness and gather the cones from amongst the jumble branches as best they could. The cone gatherers came from all walks of life and were often the wives of the forest workers or people from local villages but were really only able to work for a few days, at most two or three weeks, in the good mast year. They were generally paid by the cone bag collected but there was a special cone measure used now and again – something like half a bushel or 25 litres.
The cones were gathered in buckets and bags and taken to a local forest store and tipped on to floors to dry and stay cool. Sometimes if dry anyway, they were poured into special hessian seed bags and stored on racks or forest floor in airy shaded conditions under a rain cover. Seed identities had to be kept separate and when conditions were right they were bagged properly, tied and critically labelled with species, stand name and identity number. Small collections were delivered to local nurseries or other locations with large sheds and then lorries organised with loads of up towards a thousand bags to transport them quickly down to Alice Holt, the seed extraction and storage centre.
The PDF shows a Sitka spruce tree with very young young cones, the forerunner of a good cone crop in the late summer and also the process of collection the cones from felled trees. Note how resinous the gloves are from handling the cones.
Groups: Buildings in Forests, Forest Nurseries, Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action