Early Autumn Update on the Wildwood Seed Project, Part 1

Jeremy Turkington, Hometree’s Seed Collector and Seed Bank Coordinator, reflects upon this past Summer season and seeds collected, and why it is important to collect seeds from particular places and preserve local genetic material.

In August, as late summer transitioned to Autumn it signalled one thing - seed dispersal! And plenty of it! Hazel, Birch, Rowan, Bird Cherry, Guelder Rose, Broom and Elder trees shed their precious consignments and weeks of scouting sites for these species bore fruit… And nuts.

As a busy month closes, I’ve travelled from collecting Rowan berries on the cliffs of Knockalla and the Fanad peninsula in Northwest Donegal to picking Guelder Rose berries in the Gearagh in North-West Cork and just about everywhere in-between.

Hometree always pays close attention to where we’re getting our saplings from and the provenance of the seeds that we’re using. As designated seed collector, I’m extremely fortunate that opportunities for extreme exploration and harnessing of local knowledge come with the job. 

The success of this role depends solely on buy-in from a vast network of key stakeholders, farmers, landowners, archivists, historians, local authorities and conservationists who are generous with access, their time and sharing a passion for combining landscape scale ecological restoration with genuine community partnership.

It’s also down to the energy and commitment of our funding partner Lifes2Good Foundation in Galway, who moved quickly to support The Wildwood Seed Project driven to develop and implement a seed collection, seed orchard and processing infrastructure programme. Ultimately, realising the team's vision of self-sufficiency in harnessing the DNA of the remaining traces of Ireland's original wildwood to cultivate certified organic, native Irish tree saplings at our Ennistymon tree nursery. A big emphasis when identifying potential seed sources to eventually resource Hometree's  ambitious Wild Atlantic Rainforest Project, is to find mother trees in resilient long continuity, oceanic and hyper-oceanic ancient woodland types, spanning the Western seaboard counties. This is achieved through a combination of research and networking to scour the 2,414KM of Atlantic coastline.

When we think of conservation and biodiversity we think of species. Hometree are now able to go beyond that because we’re understanding more that genetic diversity plays a crucial role in biodiversity and genetic conservation is important and, in a way, it’s almost changing the way we look at species.

We often think of species as a single entity, now with the increasing genetic information we’re getting, which is expanding at an enormous rate, we realise that a species, if you look geographically, may be the same species but they're multiple diverse genetic populations. This explains why we get lots of variation within wild Irish species in addition to sub-species, hybridisations and mutations. It’s nature expressing its hunger to become more complex and behave in different ways.

Our strategy based on current thinking, is not only to conserve native tree species but also to preserve their local genetic integrity. This is where the concept of local provenance becomes important. If you’re planting trees in one area, ideally you want to access the genetic makeup of the trees within a twenty-kilometre radius of your planting location to propagate those saplings for the job.

These seeds are uniquely adapted to that region because once you start introducing the same species of different genetic provenances you begin altering well established relationships and that can have lots of unforeseen ecological consequences.

Typically, the genetic character of trees follows river catchments, meaning any conservation attempts of native tree species are best accomplished on a catchment-by-catchment basis but other factors such as soil type, elevation above sea level and proximity to the sea can also determine whether the saplings grown from these seeds are adapted ecologically, geologically and climatically to thrive in their intended permanent habitats.

This is why natural regeneration is always the ultimate preferred tool when guiding woodland ecosystem restoration processes. Where particular circumstances limit this or the land has suffered intense herbivore pressure - eradicating all nearby seed sources - then planting and establishing nursery grown stock, traceable from as localised genetic material as possible with a view to creating a future seed source is the next best course of action when kick starting these processes.

The late Oliver Rackham, a well renowned authority on the natural history and ecology of Irish woodlands, jested that ‘Tree planting is not synonymous with conservation, it is an admission that conservation has failed’. He also warned us that only 0.02% percent of truly ancient woodland remains within 20.861 million acres of the island of Ireland. These remnants of virgin old growth forest are the true descendants from the earliest post glacial wildwood that we aim to preserve and utilise.

Read the part two of the series: The Wildwood Seed Project: the Search for Atlantic Hazelwoods.

Hometree would like to extend thank you to Lifes2good Foundation for financial support of this project. Please note, that any opinions and ideas expressed in this article are Hometree's only and are in no way related to Lifes2good Foundation.