My wife & I avoid nursery stock from California, if it anything remotely non-hardy round here. We have lost too many of these import plants to winter conditions over the years. This is confirmation, to me, of my observation that the plants originating from long-time local stock are more likely to survive. .
Great article and I wish more Retail & Wholesale Plant Nurseries that deal with Joe/Jane Public actually knew the science of this so as to pass on the details to their customers. For the moment I've got to step away from the computer, but I use to collect Southern California Native Plant seed and had to catalog stats about where the seed was from, not just generally, but regional, local and specific local, elevation, etc. Foresters and their Nurseries have known this for a long time. Back in a while. Cheers
My personal experience with the above article and genetic footprints in plants. I live at one time up in the San Jacinto Mtns in Riverside Co in Southern California. I did work for the forestry up there and when planting projects for specific areas came up, we'd order well ahead of time for our trees from a Nursey in Northern California(near Davis I believe) called L.A. Moran Reforestation Center, which you must contact through the California State Forestry. The would require information on elevation, nearest city/town etc in order to compare what available seed there was for the area. Back in the late 1970s I never paid it much mind, but the US Forest Service Head Biologist up in Idyllwild explained that no matter what species of tree, the same species will engineer itself to adapting to local environment. This had nothing to do with evolution, as the mechanism involved do so using the software and nano-mechanisms to reset the biological clock so to speak as far as bud break timing, etc. These are actually accomplished in plants in as quickly as one generation and passed on. So seed specifically collected in specific areas or as close will only be sold if available. Back in those days I had several acres and got several neighbours and myself to order both Coulter and Jeffrey pine seedlings. One person ordered some Ponderrosa, but that was rejected because we all lived in Anza which had drier conditions and didn't meet the wetter damper conditions of Idyllwild which did indeed have massive Ponderosa trees. I'm not sure that Joe/Jane Public can order anymore from LA Moran. From what I know with the fire craziness of the past two decades, seed collection areas in many places have been wiped out. In the old days when we planted trees, we planted more than the land could support and either natural engineered processes would thin or weed out the populations or we'd manually thin them. So it was a sort of numbers game. We no longer have that luxury now days. It really hit home to me when I had a dry wash on my property where I ran a grey water line. I always wanted some White Alders( Alnus rhombifolia ), but didn't want to have to continually pump water from the well to keep them healthy. My elevation was 4600' and borderline high desert and Pine Piñon/Juniper woodland. I collected 4' saplings from two entirely separate populations far removed from each other geographically. In 1985 we had a rather exceptionally wet winter which provided good wet conditions for alot of various riparian growth. The first group which was north from me came from the Fern Valley area above Idyllwild at an elevation of 6500' near Humber Park. The second group came from an elevation of about 3000' right on the Warner Springs Ranch. Once again, my house was at elevation 4600'. It wasn't until after I planted them, that after about the second year I paid attention to when each group started it's bud break. I planted them in the same damp wash across from one another, exactly three on each side. In the beginning of course both sets of trees grew like wildfire which is normal for a riparian sapling down there, then slows down. But the second year I noticed the trees from the 3000' Elevation gave their bud break around the first week of March. I thought maybe the other trees may have died, but I looked at the bark and buds and everything seemed normal and okay. It was until the beginning of May around the second week that bud break happened for the 6500' elevation trees. Made sense. I realized that Fern Valley always had tons of snow cover and melted late, plus the Valley is noted for old growth forests. While the Warner ranch trees at 3000' Elevation rarely had a snow and was always far warmer than the Idyllwild area. Apparently though both trees looked identical, the DNA software wiring was set up differently inside the tree for proper functioning within two radically differing environments. After that when my role as a seed collector, not only of any and all trees, but also natives shrubs came about, that experience made me more aware and meticulous in my note taking and reporting. Without the first hand experience, I don't really know if the knowledge would have sunk in so much as it did, than if I was told about it or read it in a book. Anyway, that's been my experience, though maybe a bit windy. Hope some may benefit. Cheers
Seed origin effect on performance is a different thing from what they are claiming. They're claiming to have found evidence of the same plant (a clone) behaving differently in new environments based on what the old environments (different examples of the same clone came from) were like. Seedlings are not clones. You'd expect a southern seed source batch of seedlings to be less hardy etc. Although it does not always work out that way.
True enough, I brought back some clones of Quaking Aspen(as the article points out the habit of Aspen clones) from 11,ooo' Mount Gorgornio in the San Bernardino Mountains a hundred miles to the north that I collected along Fish Creek and sure enough, though they did well for a time, they ultimately didn't make it where I transplanted them. Even with abundant water and shaded area, even with generous amounts of soil samples taken from the same spot to ensure the same micro-organisms would colonize, they still failed because of environmental factors. Yet one tree did fair better than the others. It was separated far from the others and the difference was that I innoculated it with Pisolitus tinctorius(Tom Volk's famous "Dog Turd" fungus ) One has to wonder what would have happened had I taken cuttings from older adults instead where environmental epigenetic or genomic imprinting factors had already done their work. This is a side interest, but for anyone interested in genomic imprinting, this documentary about the work of British geneticist Marcus Pembrey and Swedish geneticist Lars Olov Bygren found that people are also effected the same way. There appears to be a small window of opportunity with both male and female experiences which will be passed on to offspring. Give yourself about an hours time. The documentary is called: "The Ghost In Your Genes"
