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Cones are being Harvested in LVM Seed Plantations

In the seed plantations of JSC “Latvia's State Forests”, cones are usually collected in January; afterwards cones will be dried to grow seedlings for high-quality and productive forest trees. Active work is underway in a total of 11 plantations, where 170 hectolitres of pine and 190 hectolitres of fir cones have already been collected and delivered to the cone drying facility.

Each cone contains approximately 12-25 seeds. One hectolitre contains about 560-600 grams of seeds. In turn, about 120 000 tree seedlings can be grown from one kilogram of seeds.

Seed plantations are created in cooperation with the Latvian State Forest Research Institute “Silava”, growing grafted pines, each of which is a clone or copy of a particularly high-value tree. This means that the seeds are genetically superior to those that could be harvested in forests. The forest grown from the seeds of these cones will be more productive, faster growing and will give better quality wood. The collection of seeds in forest stands takes place in rare cases and is carried out in special stands of genetic resources, where the rules of forest reproductive material provide for the restoration of clearings with seed material from the same place, or seedlings grown from the seeds collected in the respective place.

The collection of cones in State forest plantations starts in November. If the weather is warm or the cones are not ready, work needs to be postponed for a later time. For the cones to be harvested, they must be exposed to frost and change their colour to brown, because then they open better once they are dry. Too early and warm spring is not favourable for collecting cone seeds: if the spring sun warms well already in March, the cones closer to the top of the tree may already start to open and such seeds are no longer suitable for collecting. Cones are collected until the beginning of April.

LVM manages the most modern tree nurseries in Europe, where high-quality young seedlings are grown from specially selected seeds. In 2022, LVM grew 61.4 million seedlings, most of which – 32.7 million seedlings – were used for the restoration of State forests, 13.9 million seedlings – to the owners of other forests in Latvia, and almost 14.8 million seedlings were exported. In total, LVM has grown 884.9 million forest tree seedlings over a period of 23 years.