this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Well there may be more overlap than you think. We’re both semi-arid climates with increasing climate-related heat and drought impacts. Your climate might rule out some of the more frost sensitive plants, and truly Mediterranean species that can’t handle the summer monsoon. And you’ll be able to grow some slightly more heat and drought sensitive plants than we can.
If you haven’t seen this document yet, it’s a great resource for Albuquerque and the greater SW. https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/Climate-Ready-Trees-Report-Nov2020.pdf
Just be sure you don’t get ahead of the current climate. Some trees that may thrive in the coming decades might not be able to make it through a colder than average winter. It’s easy to assume we won’t have those anymore but they are still possible, just less likely each year. It’s OK (and fun) to push the boundaries a little but we have people here trying to plant mangoes with the assumption we won’t have frost again which is a bit optimistic.
The species I can’t grow from seed is Cupressus/Hesperocyparis (depending on your preferred taxonomy) guadalupensis if you have any tips there!
Thanks for the link to the Nature report. That's been my main info source for the little side project I mentioned. There are many arid-adapted trees from further south that will almost, but not quite, thrive along the Front Range due to frost sensitivity. I'm trying to observe as many of these species in real life as I can to see which might be most aesthetically desirable to a CO homeowner or municipality that wants to grow a water-wise specimen tree 10 years from now.
I had a feeling the species you were having trouble with germinating from seed was a gymnosperm. Everything you said just fits the profile of the special challenges they offer. As far as tissue culture, it's a bit of an advanced challenge since the only method that seems to work for large scale multiplication in gymnosperms generally is embryo culture or somatic embryogenesis. Frankly, those methods are hard and require a properly equipped lab. There's a lot of tissue culture you can do in a clean home kitchen, but somatic embryogenesis requires lots of growth regulator chemicals and the right equipment to maintain stringent sterility, not just cleanliness.
So, from a practical perspective, 'macropropagation' (just rooting larger cuttings really) is preferred for cypresses generally. However, even that is more challenging than most other trees.
Here's a typical somewhat current paper breaking down the extra care needed to get cypress cuttings to take root. https://riojournal.com/article/52947/
If you are ambitious or just curious, this one shows the typical protocol needed for embryo culture. It also explains in the intro the biological reason why your seed germination rate is so low. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214434/
The last paper may guide you to finding or creating the conditions needed to get seed batches that germinate at a decent rate, yet another strategy to overcome the difficult propagation of these species.
These are only a jumping off point, the literature is massive on this topic. Hope it helps. Thanks for engaging, it's fun.
Thanks, I'll check out the papers!