Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 36(1): January 2010 Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2010. 36(1): 47–54 47 Contrasting Ohio Nursery Stock Availability with Community Planting Needs T. Davis Sydnor, Sakthi Subburayalu, and Matthew Bumgardner Abstract. There has been a continuing disparity between what urban foresters say they request for community plantings and the stock availability from nurseries. To investigate this, twenty-two of Ohio’s urban foresters were surveyed in February 2008 to contrast their planting needs with nursery stock availability. Urban foresters reported planting more than 9,000 trees in 2005 and expected to plant more than 15,000 trees in their respective communities in 2010. At the same time, nearly 278,000 trees [5 cm (2 in)] were reported as being available for sale by nurseries participating in the 2008 Ohio Nursery Stock Survey. The results suggested that maples, crabapples, many hawthorns, and pears generally were present in nurseries in excess of the quantities desired by urban foresters. Conversely many legumes, oaks, elms, lilacs and lindens were lacking in availability. Several other species were somewhat balanced in terms of urban foresters’ requests and nursery production. Ohio, U.S. has been dealing with the impacts of the emerald ash borer on Fraxinus species. Increasing taxonomic diversity can be a relatively low cost means of insuring against the possible introduction of another exotic pest that might attack another genus (such as Acer) and requires increased availability of some species currently lacking in availability in the nursery supply chain. Key Words. Acer; Community Planting; Crataegus; Fraxinus; Gleditsial; Malus; Nursery Stock Availability; Pyrus; Quercus; Tilia; Ulmus. A commonly reported paradox has been heard when talking with urban foresters and nursery producers in the state of Ohio, U.S. Urban foresters claim they cannot get the plants they desire for planting on community streets, in parks, or in other public spaces, and must settle for second or third choices. Nursery producers, in contrast, claim that they will produce anything customers wish if they become aware of a demand. In order to bridge the gap between trees desired by urban foresters and those available from produc- ing nurseries in the state, surveys of urban foresters were taken in 1995, 2000, and 2008. Summary results were published in the Buck- eye (the official publication of the Ohio Nursery and Landscape Association), so that results would be available to the Ohio nurs- ery community (Sydnor 1996; Sydnor et al. 2000; Sydnor 2008). Some nurseries have responded and are growing some previ- ously requested plants but many urban foresters find they are still unable to get their first choice in plant material. Another part of the puzzle would be to compare what is being requested with what is actually available for sale in nurseries. Nurseries have had informa- tion on what was requested in the 1995, 2000, and 2008 surveys, but neither the urban foresters nor nurseries have had a feel for the sup- ply side of the equation. This study seeks to address this problem. The impact of emerald ash borer (EAB) has reinforced the need for increased diversity in urban forests. Communities often try to limit a single species to 10%, a genus to 20%, and families to 30% (10-20-30 rule or guideline) of the trees in their forest (Santamour 1990). Using these criteria, many Ohio commu- nities are too heavily planted in maple and pear. For example, some Ohio community public spaces have been found to contain more than 30% maple (Sydnor and Subburayalu 2008a; Syd- nor and Subburayalu 2008b). Ohio’s original shade tree evalu- ation project, which included 97 community plantings, found 27 of the plantings (28%) were maple (Sydnor et al. 1999). A 2007 survey of urban foresters suggested a potential eco- nomic impact of EAB in Ohio communities at USD $2 to $8 bil- lion (Sydnor et al. 2007). Furthermore, about 8% of community forests in Ohio are in ash species, while maples are in excess of 30% (Sydnor and Subburayalu 2008a). Given that maple abun- dance is approximately four times greater than ash abundance, the statewide community impact might reach $8 to $30 billion if a similarly devastating exotic pest of maple were to strike. Bio- logical diversity is a relatively inexpensive way to deal with the threat of exotic pests, especially when compared to removing and replacing trees. While these examples relate specifically to Ohio and the Midwest, other regions in the United States and even other countries have imbalances they must consider as well (McBride 2008). The southeastern U.S., for example, depends too heavily on oak species while other regions have different imbalances. Previous surveys of nursery stock needs have concentrated on urban foresters with the results published in literature available to the nursery producer. However, if urban foresters had some notion of what might be available, they could seek additional suppliers, encourage existing suppliers to produce material that might not be available, grow some material themselves, or de- velop contracts for plants to be produced in the future. Columbus, Ohio, expanded its own nursery in the 1990s to produce plants for out planting as a result of the inability to gain the desired mix of plants (Low 2008). Existing nursery stock surveys are designed for an individual to identify a grower from whom a given plant might be secured; they convey information to out- lets marketing to the final user but are not designed to provide information to upstream segments in the supply chain—such as liner or seedling producers—who are likely to be in other states. To this end, a survey of existing nursery stock relative to cur- rent and anticipated needs by urban foresters for community ©2010 International Society of Arboriculture
January 2010
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