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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
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Plant · P-048
Italian Alder
Alnus cordata
Italian Alder is a fast-growing nitrogen fixer, nodulating through a soil fungus rather than needing the legume inoculant most nitrogen fixers do, and it builds soil quickly through heavy leaf litter. It shrugs off heavy clay and poor soil, handles anything from dry to wet ground, and tolerates enough shade to sit at a woodland edge rather than demanding open sun. It offers no food or medicinal yield at all, and being a mountain native with a dry summer and cool nights in its blood, it fails wherever summers run long, hot and humid.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 5–7
- Soil
- Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moderate · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 30–50 ft
- Mature spread
- 26 ft
- Plant spacing
- 19.7–26.2 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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