A seed might be small enough to hold in the palm of your hand, but its potential impact is massive: just one seed has the potential to clean air and water, support wildlife habitat, cool communities and mitigate climate change by removing and holding carbon dioxide. But in many parts of the nation, the vital seeds and young trees we rely on to support our forests and cities are in short supply. 

Robbie Lefebvre, a member of the Oregon Department of Forestry displays the seed of a Douglas fir tree, freshly harvested from a cone., These photos are part of a collection from an American Forests planting in Santiam State Forest to reforest land burned by the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire. The project is part of a larger effort: American Forests, in partnership with the Oregon Department of Forestry, will pilot the Reforest America Carbon Program (RACP) by reforesting 660 acres of severely burned forestland on Santiam State Forest in Northwest Oregon. The project will be innovative on all fronts –implementing a novel approach to carbon-financed reforestation using Verra’s Projected Carbon Unit (PCU) and demonstrating Verra’s forthcoming Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR) methodology on public forestland. CREATOR Andrew Studer / American Forests

Photo Credit: Andrew Studer / American Forests

American Forests introduced Seed September in 2022 as a month to raise awareness of the scarcity of one of our most important small resources. Two years later, this much is still true: we need seeds and trees more than ever before. And more than that, we need the right seeds and trees – ones that are resilient to a changing climate. 

Here’s the situation 

Across the country, severe wildfires, pests and diseases are continuing to decimate our forests. These fires are burning so hot that they’re scorching the very seeds that forests need to regrow. As a result, human-assisted restoration is often needed to return trees to our forests. Meanwhile, urban and suburban communities across the country are also feeling the heat from climate change. Without trees on their landscapes to provide shade and cooling, the people who live in them suffer, especially those who live in marginalized neighborhoods. 

To address these urgent needs, we need a large national supply of seeds, seedlings and young trees ready to be grown and planted.  

But we don’t have enough seeds or trees to do the job. In California alone, we need to double the number of seeds collected for reforestation in order to restore the 1.5 million acres of forest that have been recently burned by wildfires. And more than 500 million new trees will need to be planted in urban areas, to provide adequate shade and cooling to neighborhoods and achieve Tree Equity nationwide. 

Planting in a burn site in Santiam State Forest near Gates, OR., These photos were part of a shoot at a planting in Oregon’s Santiam State Forest to restore forest that was seriously damaged in the 2020 Labor Day fires. American Forests is supporting the work in order to increase the forest’s carbon storage potential and protect drinking water, recreational benefits and wildlife. To read more about the work, see the magazine article: https://www.americanforests.org/article/a-tale-of-two-burns/. CREATOR Jason Houston / American Forests Jason Houston

Photo Credit: Jason Houston / American Forests

Building up a national seed supply 

American Forests and our partners in federal agencies and other organizations are working to grow the number of seeds ready to be cultivated across the nation. Seeds are sourced from two places – seed orchards, where trees are planted for the purpose of producing seeds over many years, and out in the wild on public and private lands. 

Both sources of seed require specially trained workforces. For example, skilled foresters and technicians need to monitor cone development over the course of much of a year to be ready to coalesce and work with tree climbers and other partners to collect cones in the narrow 3-6 week period when most cones are ripe for harvesting. Here are just a few things we’re doing to support this work at American Forests. 

  • Managing wild seed collection on forests across the nation. For example, in California and Oregon, we’re leading one of the largest cone collection efforts ever in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service as part of our work with them to implement the REPLANT Act and address a growing need for climate-informed reforestation across 3.6 million acres of public land. 
  • Bringing partners together to study seed shortages and coordinate to build networks dedicated to growing seed supplies. In Tennessee, we are collaborating on a wild seed network with the University of Tennessee’s Tree Improvement Program. Together, we’re ramping up white oak acorn collection to support this species for generations to come. 
  • Growing and training workforces of seed and cone collectors. In New York City, we’ve partnered with Nespresso to fund interns at Greenbelt Native Plant Center who have helped collect seeds and grow them into 3,000 seedlings. 

From seeds into trees 

Once seeds are collected, they head to a nursery, where they start their transformation from seed to tree. However, nurseries face numerous challenges that constrain the number of seedlings and trees they can grow – meaning the right trees may not be available when foresters and communities need them.

Trained nursery professionals are hard to come by, and it can be hard to anticipate when there will be a surge for trees created by events, like wildfire. Likewise, larger trees used for urban tree planting require years to grow at nurseries, so nurseries need lots of advanced notice to support increased urban tree planting. This is some of the work American Forests is doing to help:

  • Helping to establish and expand nurseries. With our partners Friends of the Olentangy and Green Columbus, we helped establish multiple nurseries in vacant lots in Columbus, Ohio, which are growing thousands of trees for the surrounding community.  
  • Supporting scaled up growing capacity. We’ve partnered with the U.S. Forest Service and private nurseries to expand seedling supply in Oregon and Washington and grow 3.3 million seedlings to help reforest 10,000 acres on Mt. Hood, Okanogan-Wenatchee and Willamette National Forests. 
  • Managing day to day nursery operations. American Forests staff are working to double the rate of reforestation in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley by helping grow seedlings at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services’ local nursery Marinoff Nusery. 

Looking to science to support a resilient future 

Of course, we are not doing this alone. We are collaborating with forestry experts – from plant geneticists to land managers and professional tree climbers – to identify and collect more climate-resilient seeds, so that we can grow trees designed for a future climate. This work includes: 

Whitebark pine restoration activities happening in Glacier National Park Mesh cages cover whitebark pine cones, on trees suspected to have genetic resistance to invasive blister rust, to prevent birds or bears from eating them. The seeds collected will be used to restore the trees in other areas.

Photo Credit: Glacier National Park

  • Supporting research to identify seeds with natural resistance to climate stressors and other threats. We are continuing to work to save the whitebark pine and locate trees with a natural genetic resistance to white pine blister rust. To do so, we’re sending tree climbers out into the field to collect needles that will be tested to identify parent trees with a resistance to this deadly disease – parent trees that can later be harvested for their healthy seeds. 
  • Growing knowledge about how to source and plant seeds amidst a shifting climate. Changing temperatures and weather patterns mean that some seeds are no longer suitable to be grown in their place of origin. We have been working with the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Change to learn more about how climate change will affect trees in cities including Phoenix and Detroit, in order to select and plant seeds that have the best chance of surviving and thriving in the future. 

Supporting seeds together 

Despite all this progress, there is still much to do. We need continued support from policymakers, members of the public, government agencies and private partners alike to continue to build this vital supply. And we need to continue to bolster state and Tribal nurseries, boost research efforts, and provide more funding toward the entire journey from seed to tree. While this Seed September we’ve got much to share, next year, we hope to bring news of even more progress toward the goal of building an adequate supply of climate-resilient seeds and trees that are ready to restore our forests and communities. 

If you’re interested in learning more about why seeds matter and what we’re doing to help, join us this month for Seed September as we give tiny seeds the recognition and support they deserve.