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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-050
Speckled Alder
Alnus incana subsp. rugosa
Speckled Alder is a nitrogen-fixing shrub that thrives on wet, disturbed ground, nodulating through a soil fungus rather than needing a legume inoculant, and it forms dense thickets that deer and moose browse and that host the Green Comma butterfly. It gives no food yield at all, but its bark has a long history as a dye and tanning material, producing dark shades plus browns, reds and oranges. It self-sows and suckers hard from the root crown into thickets, so it needs its margin mowed or grazed to stay contained, with the thicket wood harvested as coppice fuel.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 2–6
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moderate · Wet
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 6.8–7.2
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 15–25 ft
- Mature spread
- 15–25 ft
- Plant spacing
- 6–12 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Ribes americanum
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Aronia Purple
Aronia x prunifolia
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Autumn Olive
Elaeagnus umbellata
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Basket Willow
Salix viminalis
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Beach Plum
Prunus maritima
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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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