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Forest Research has recently examined some long-term experiments to examine provenance variation of emerging speciesIndividual reports for the species covered so far can be found here. The table at the bottom of this page is a summary of how the results compare with Forestry Commission Bulletin 66, which only included four of the species.

  • The summary for each species should be considered along with the full results as the detail can be important.
  • FC Bulletin 66 was generally based on early results from the trials; in the recent work the experiments were much older but unfortunately not all of the trials had survived.
  • Recent work has analysed the results with the objective of providing guidance on the best region for seed collections in the current climate. The method of analysis used to support FC Bulletin 66 was to compare individual provenances with each other and use this as a basis for making recommendations.
  • These are the first results published in Britain for European silver fir, Pacific silver fir, Low’s fir, Japanese red cedar, coast redwood and red oak.
  • Only the western hemlock experiments contained provenances from Britain and most of the reports suggest testing home provenances should be a priority for future work.
Species FC Bulletin 66 Recent work
European sliver fir Not included Provenances from

Calabria, Italy should be first choice of origin

Pacific silver fir Not included Little variation in native range, use material from British Columbia, the Olympic Mountains and

western Cascades of Washington

Low’s fir Not included Study shows that best provenances were from the north of its natural range
Noble fir Included – a promising source was US Seed Zone 451, east of Portland Best areas for future seed collections are the Cascade mountains in northern Oregon and southern Washington
Japanese red cedar Not included Best provenances come from the mid-latitudes of Honshu (34-38°N), Japan
Coast redwood Not included Avoid southerly origins south of the San Francisco Bay area.
Western red cedar Included – best source was Olympic Mountains Washington (US Seed Zone 21) Best Provenances are the coastal region of Washington and British Columbia between 46°N and 50°N
Western hemlock Included – best sources were Vancouver Island (BC Seed Zone 1020) and Washington (US Seed Zone 212) Provenances from Vancouver Island and the Cascades of Washington and Oregon

performed well as did two provenances from the British Isles

Grand fir Origins from Region I (Olympic Peninsula and the

Puget Sound) have grown uniformly well on all sites

Seed origins from coastal Washington should be preferred
Red oak Not included Seed origins between latitudes of 41°N and 44°N from the Great Lakes region showed significantly better growth compared to more northerly ones

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Authors
Forestry Staff Matt Parratt FH0T7ZY.fcea0f09.fill 600x600 1
Matt Parratt

Research Scientist

Forestry Staff Gary Kerr b1blzhR.d750fe11.fill 600x600 1
Gary Kerr

Research Fellow

Forestry Staff CR picture.2e16d0ba.fill 600x600 1
Chris Reynolds

Project Leader