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Photo by Bob Pennell Jose Perez of Medford brings a load of incense cedar seedlings to the nursery's assembly line, where they are wrapped and prepared for the Winema National Forest. Nursery reflects return to diverse forest Federal farm starts grasses, trees, shrubs By BETH QUINN CENTRAL POINT -- Tomorrow's federal forests are coming out of the ground this month as workers lift, sort and pack 12 million native seedlings destined for spring planting across six Western states. The Forest Service's J. Herbert Stone Nursery grows 18 species of conifers and more than 100 species of shrubs, grasses and other greens on order for clients that include 28 national forests, five Bureau of Land Management districts and two Indian reservations. A decade ago, the 311-acre nursery grew just two kinds of trees: Douglas fir and ponderosa pine for timber production. But the 1999 crop includes incense cedar for fire restoration in the Winema forest's Chiloquin Ranger District, huckleberries to revive dwindling stocks on the Warm Springs reservation and Pacific yew to replace trees harvested for cancer-fighting Taxol from the Willamette forest. "The product line changes as you go along," says nursery manager John Scholtes. "We're depending on that future business and moving quickly to learn to grow native species that haven't been grown before in Forest Service nurseries." Each year's crop begins in the seed repository, where the federal farmers store 60,000 pounds of seeds gathered from millions of acres of public land in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Utah and Idaho. When national land managers want trees, the new forests are sown from stored seed previously gathered from the same elevation and genetic stock. "You'll get a better tree," explains Mark Nigh, who manages reforestation for the Chiloquin district. "We keep track of what we had over there and what we're using, and if we get low, we'll collect more seed." Not only are foresters fussy about their seed, they're fussy about their seedlings. For the incense cedars Nigh plans to plant on 1,100 acres burned by wildfire in 1992, the specifications include a stem diameter of 4 millimeters, a height of 4 to 17 inches and root length of 10.5 to 13.5 inches. And when the 396,000 trees grown for the project came out of the ground Wednesday, he made sure two Winema forest employees were on hand to oversee the operation. "We want to see our trees and make sure we're getting what we want," he says. For Wayne Rolle to get the native grasses he wanted a few years ago, the botanist for the Rogue River National Forest had to collect the seeds himself. "I would just go out, often with a group of people, and look for places where there were grasses that had a lot of seed on it," he says. "I was going after ones that I felt would have some use for restoration projects." Today the Rogue forest's policy requires using native grasses on projects ranging from replanting skid roads following timber sales and stabilizing landslides to repairing flood-damaged roads and restoring damaged riparian zones. In an era of declining timber sales and reforestation needs, the new federal emphasis on biological diversity has presented new challenges to federal farms. "We'll read the literature and try to translate that into an operational direction," Scholtes says. "Not only do we not know how to germinate seeds initially, we don't even know what kind of pot to use." Before the advent of ecosystem management for public lands, federal foresters considered ceanothus a pesky weed to be rid of and penstemon a pretty flower for the garden. Now both are cultivated at the Stone nursery. "They're growing things that people haven't grown in the past," says Rolle. "It's essential for us." With Oregon's only other Forest Service nursery scheduled to close this year, Scholtes and the federal farmers who work with him hope diversity can insure their survival. "We're counting on that. One of the reasons we're saying we need to remain here is that anything we learn is public domain," he says. "We see ourselves as a learning center." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA