The Seed Bank......

Aside from serving as a native plant and tree provider, the Bessey Nursery also acts as the seed bank for the entire Rocky Mountain Region of the USDA-Forest Service.

Each year foresters from throughout the Rocky Mountain region (Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska) collect cones from trees and send them to the nursery where the seed is extracted, cleansed and stored until a ranger district has a need for trees.

Douglas Fir Seed

The nursery seed bank holds approximately 15,000 pounds of conifer seed and the four main species stored are Engelmann Spruce (Picea engelmannii), Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta).

Once the cones have been processed and the seed is ready for storage each seed lot is labeled according to where it came from, with specific location information coded into the seed lot number.

For example, the label on the box pictured to the right is marked PP-12-496-086-03 and each line holds a specific piece of information

about the seed source.

PP is the species, of which this is Ponderosa Pine. 12 is the code for the forest from where it was collected, in this case the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.

496 is the specific seed zone and this is an area of the forest where geneticists have determined the trees are of similar genetic characteristics.

086 is the elevation, 8,600 feet.

And 03 is the year in which the seed was collected, 2003.

All of this information is vitally important when a forest has a natural catastrophe such as wildfire, a blowdown event or a bark beetle infestation. We can then prepare this seed lot to grow seedlings for our clients to plant back into that specific part of the forest where the trees will be well adapted to those exact environmental conditions.

Inside the seed banks cold storage unit.

After the seed lot is labeled and boxed it is placed inside a freezer where the seed is stored at 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The seed is kept at this temperature to slow down the seeds metabolism, allowing it to be stored for several decades before it will begin to degrade and lose its viability.

Each year our nursery produces 2 million conifer seedlings within it's bare root fields and greenhouses for restoration and reforestation efforts throughout the region and the seed reserves inside the seed bank are where it starts each year!