Redwood Reader

112.California Tree Seed Program, Cal Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program
These are two state programs that are essential to watershed health thatcould use a shot in the arm. One is facing budget cuts from the manufactured state deficit, exactly the same size as California was ripped off for by power suppliers in the energy crunch. Schwarzenegger should have persisted here regardless of party because he is leader of the state and the state being ripped off is the issue that put him in office. The other program seems to be running out of steam for a lack of new ideas. That both are critical in restoration becomes obvious in the light of glomalin.
It was reported recently that the state was about to integrate its tree seed program at UC davis and consolidate it with Forest Service work. Nowhere do the articles relate to the seed bank program for other users, such as MRC, that have collected their own seed nad store it frozen at Davis for planting out every year. This program was given twenty years worht of seed in the early eighties. MMC and MRC spent considerable time and trouble to replenish these stocks, as the first year found a high proportion of insect infested cones. Local folks were used the first year and lots of people got a good hands on experience. With all the trouble the first year professional seed collectors were used for Douglas fir the second year with much better results.
It was also explained to me students did the work under professors direction and that large numbers of folks were being trained to work for forest and native plant nurseries. The FOrest Service had a nursery in MCKinleyville closed as part of the Redwood National PArk deal that ended Forest Service jurisdiction on public lands on the North Coast. LP and Simpson have provided many of the containerized trees we personally have purchased since then. Our bare root trees have come from Smith River Nurseries. BLM and NPS have not needed to replant large areas and it is not in their management plans to replant after fire, so their is little federal need for seed here. I am not sure of the disposition of the LP nursery since the sale. I have seen pictures of the Simpson nursery recently as backdrops for local TV spots, so they at least still exist.
WIth redwoods not having a real seed year in twenty years we wonder about the amount of seed material currently held, how fast it is used, and what plans are being readied to refill the seed coffers. IT is likely economies of scale will allow a single operation to germinate enough seed but centralizing always roughs over the local edges and discounts local information simply by making fewer people available to talk to and putting them as far away as possible. THe state is involved in many restoration and habitat improvement projects, public and private, and have a much greater need for tree seed.
Before I started researching mycorhizzia my favorite search item was landscape stability through reforestation with tree crops. I have planted quite a few acorns in my time , but the survival rate was so slow I wondered what was out there I could use. Rodale Press had two books on tropical agroforestry and they are actually very relevant to this discussion. The problem is that acorns are susceptible to many predators, tap rooting trees are very difficult to transplant, and dry summers make it hard to keep newly planted trees alive the first few years. African workers devised a method of creating grass baskets deep enough to grow a tap root that could then be transplanted in the field intact with its container. This method greatly reduces the number of predators, many of whom can attack seed but not trees. It guarentees all the trees have germinated and grown for several months and will be better able to exist unaided in the forest. I tried growing oaks, madrones, pepperwoods and bigleaf maple in pots. Madrone, tanoak and oak sprouted quickly. Madrone hit the pot bottom first and succumbed. White and black oak followed. Maple and pepperwood seemed to fill the pot with roots. Tanoak seemed to adjust after hitting pot bottom, unlike any of the others. So when I got online oaks were among the first searches i did, and Cal IHRMP was one of the best sites. I saved nearly every Oak n Folks article. As I said, I moved away from this area of study when I started following the mycorhizzia trail. As it turns out, it was merely a side loop on the same trail. Oaks also play a role in water retention and the glomalin story, on a very large scale and is severely threatened by Sudden Oak Death, imperiling a large amount of our water supply. Oak trees are mycorhizzial and we find oak woodlands play the same role as conifer forests in the water cycle, having adapted to local conditions. Other information said soils have a fungito bacteria ratio, and that under one would grasslands and over one forest. It seems likely the ratio can be further quantified by forest type and tree cover.
SOD is a threat to over eleven million acres of oak forest in California alone. Oaks fall in areas with thirty to forty inches of rain a year. Higher rainfall means a higher percentage of conifers, like Douglas fir and Black oak regions. Lower rain gives us the savanna effect exemplified by Oregon white oak, blue oak and other species specific to their home ranges. Almost all of these areas are open enough to grow grass under and between the trees and has been a prime area for ranching. Oaks are having a hard time regenerating and development is further shrinking our precipitation handling mechanism. It seems essential we learn to grow and transplant these trees in the case of restoration but also in the event SOD explodes across the landscape while more resistant tree types are developed. It may take a massive replanting to preserve the landscape and knowing how to grow the trees and having seed on hand is certainly good insurance against a known risk. We would like to see a government program working on a better planting out scheme for oaks. It is possible acorns sprout better after fire (see my earlier article on the effect of smoke on germination) and it may pay to smoke the acorns, hopefully raising the percentage of sprouters above the ten percent persistently reported.
These two programs should be put to better use. If we looka t the Eastern forests we see 300 years of interference and people living with flooding as though it were inevitable. And itr is in the fractured and developed watersheds that have been cleared and paved or built up or that have been repeatedly logged ensuring the biologically conditioned soil zone is a fraction of what it originally was. This situation is easier to see and fix here in California but the principles of soil conditioning is the heart of sustainability throughout the world.