Relevance of Origin

i) Relevance of Origin

(a) Knowledge of origin is relevant and important wherever attempts are being made to maintain or re-create native woodland/woodland habitat, using plants raised from seed rather than relying on natural regeneration. First choice would be plants from origins, local to the planting site in preference to origins from farther afield.

For other planting, especially amenity planting in parkland or similar ‘open’ landscapes, knowledge that plants are of local origin is a reassurance that plants have grown successfully in the locality in the past. If plants are known not to be of local origin, it is prudent to ensure that information about origin is noted in long term records for the relevant woodland.

(b) Knowledge of origin is also relevant where plants are being introduced, so that site conditions on the planting site can be related to site conditions of the seed origin and the subsequent performance of the plantings.

(c) Because of the scale of woodland clearance in Britain and the period over which British woodlands have been managed, there are many plantations for which records of the origin of planting stock have been lost. While formal records of any given current seed collection may show the origin as ‘not known’, any supplementary information indicating the probability that a provenance is of local origin may be valued by prospective purchasers.

(d) Because of lack of certainty about origin and hence lack of supplies of known origin, specifiers often have no option but to accept ‘local provenance’ as a substitute for local origin.