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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-1168
Grey Alder
Alnus incana
Grey Alder is a fast-growing, short-lived tree of streambanks, seeps and other wet ground that fixes its own nitrogen through root nodules, sharing some of it with neighbouring plants as it grows. It thickets by suckering roots and layering branches, which is exactly what holds a bank together, and it resprouts readily after fire, browsing or beaver cutting. Rarely living past forty years, it acts as a nurse tree that gives way once longer-lived species establish in its shade, while its leaves and twigs feed deer, elk and hares along the way.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 2–6
- Soil
- Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 3.4–7.7
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 29.5–59.1 ft
- Mature spread
- 16.4–50 ft
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Castanea dentata
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American Elm
Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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