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.