Seed and seedling biology

Summary

Placing Douglas fir seeds onto moist filter paper The aim of this programme is to improve the reliability of all methods of woodland establishment from seeds - for example:

Direct seeding
(Human assisted) natural regeneration
Traditional nursery sowing plus seedling establishment
Information on the storage, dormancy, pretreatment and germination of individual tree species

Research objectives

To determine the fate of naturally dispersed and direct sown seed
To understand what makes tree seeds germinate or not
To investigate establishment and survival of seedlings.

Funders and partners

Forestry Commission logo
This research is funded by the Forestry Commission Seed and seedling biology programme.

Why study seed and seedling biology?

British forestry has been based on sowing seeds into the hospitable environment of a nursery, transferring the best seedlings to the forest planting site and several decades later clear-felling the resulting trees. Today there are many woodland managers who would prefer to use more natural processes in the creation and maintenance of uneven-aged and continuous-cover forests. Two methods are being increasingly employed, ‘natural regeneration’ (or more accurately ‘human-assisted natural regeneration’) and ‘direct seeding’, but are both proving to be much less successful and predictable at establishing trees than the traditional technique:

One major cause is an insufficient understanding of tree seed characteristics - for example what is the fate of most naturally dispersed or direct sown seed; what prevents or stimulates surviving seeds to germinate.
A second problem is that tree seed quality and performance lag at least 50 years behind that of agricultural, horticultural, vegetable and flower seeds.
A third is that the factors affecting seedling establishment and survival are very poorly understood.

Seed and seedling biology research will help to solve each of these problems.