This total may be off by a factor of 10 or 100 or even 1,000: The point is that a single Douglas-fir produces a great many seeds during its life. Douglas Fir Pseudotsuga menziesii 20 Seeds Soak the seeds in water for 24 hours. Douglas-fir seeds feed small mammals, including chipmunks, mice, shrews, and red squirrels. That's 100,000 seeds per tree, 100 times during the tree's life. While not dependent on fire, large Douglas-fir are protected from fire by thick, corky bark, and they readily regenerate on burned sites with their lightweight, winged seeds. For the sake of estimating, let's assume that they last 500 years. For the purpose of estimating, let's assume a tree has 1,000 cones once every 5 years and zero cones in all other years.ĭouglas-firs can live to 1,000 years or more. A Douglas-fir is highly productive (a "mast" year) only once every 5-to-7 years, with a cycle of moderate or even no cone production in between. Douglas fir can grow to 200 or 300 feet in the wild, providing food and nesting areas for wildlife, including grouse, nuthatches, warblers, squirrels and chipmunks. Let's round down to 1,000 cones per tree.ĭouglas-firs, like many other Pacific NW conifers, go through cycles of cone productivity. Pseudotsuga Menziesii v Menziesii - Douglas Fir 30 Seeds A native to North America and naturalised across Europe and parts of South America, this evergreen. It can be well into the thousands, and probably well into the ten thousands. Seed will need to be cold stratified to ensure good germination. The dormancy within the seed is short and easily broken. I've looked at Douglas-firs in the summer and tried to estimate how many cones are on each tree. 5g or 200-300 seeds Please note conifer seeds can be difficult to germinate successfully. Seeds of the Douglas Fir are relatively easy to germinate and grow. Behind each cone scale are 2 seeds, so we'll estimate 100 seeds per cone. On the cone in the photo above, I tried to count the number of cone scales. I worked hard at finding the plump fir seeds in those three cones and finally I gave up when I didn’t find many. In a steady-state environment, out of all the seeds that a single Douglas-fir tree produces in its lifetime, how many will grow into another mature Douglas-fir tree?įirst, let's estimate how many seeds we're talking about. Douglas Fir seed The photo above shows one of the fir seeds.
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