HARVESTING THE ANNUAL SEED CROP 



By SYDNEY MOORE, 



Assistant Distbict Forester, United States Forest Service. 



eVERY fall sees the harvesting of one crop throughout the mountainous, 

 forested region of the West, which is not mentioned in any official 

 "crop reporter;" a crop which few people outside of those directly 

 concerned in its harvesting know much about, but a crop that is yearly 

 increasing in quantity and value. It is the annual crop of forest tree seed, 

 and the size of each year's crop is of real concern to the country at large, 

 since the seed harvested is chiefly used in the reforestation of the vast burned 

 and denuded areas of the Rocky and Pacific Coast mountains. 



The collection of forest tree seed by commercial collectors has been carried 

 on to a limited extent for many years in a few localities in the West. There 

 is one professional collector in the Black Hills of South Dakota who for 

 years has been gathering western yellow pine seed for sale to seed dealers, and 

 has also exported quantities to Europe, especially Germany, where the busi- 

 ness in tree seed is very extensive. There is a small village in the mountains 

 near Pueblo, Colorado, where about a dozen individuals have built up a 

 considerable industry of the collection and sale of tree seed. In 1909, the 

 value of the seed crop from this one locality was about |8,000. These collectors 

 sell their crops to seed dealers in this country and also to dealers in Germany. 

 For a number of years there has been a very active demand from German 

 dealers for seed from the United States, especially of Douglas fir. In fact, 

 until the last two or three years, the export trade in forest tree seed has 

 probably fully equaled the domestic trade, and the whole business has been 

 very restricted. Recently this condition has changed, due to the fact that the 

 Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture has under- 

 taken an extensive campaign of reforestation by seed sowing upon the national 

 forests, which demands immense quantities of forest tree seed of desirable 

 species. And while the government collects by far the greater part of its tree 

 seed through its own forest officers, still a considerable amount is purcha.sed 

 from commercial collectors. 



The conditions and work of harvesting the seed crop described in this 

 article are particularly typical of the Rocky Mountain region, and the work 

 as carried on by the Forest Service upon the national forests of that region. 

 The forests of the Rocky Mountains, as is well known, consist almost exclusively 

 of coniferous species, in contradistinction to the prevailing broadleaf forests 

 of the East. Consequently, the important seed crop consists of the seed of 

 conifers, or evergreen trees. Although the forests contain a variety of species 

 of trees, including western yellow pine, Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, Engelmann 

 spruce, blue spruce, limber pine, bristle-cone pine, balsam, white fir, and 

 junipers, only the first four named are of special commercial importance. 

 Consequently it is the seed of these four species that is chiefly sought after 

 for reforestation purposes. Even though the future forest is to serve pri- 

 marily the purpose of protecting some watershed from floods and erosion, 

 it is advisable to plant the seed of some species that will at maturity yield 

 valuable commercial timber. 



