The natural and commercial forests in Great Britain are regulated by the Forestry Commission, which is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. Now called Forestry England; Natural Resources Wales; and Scottish Forestry. The Forest Reproductive Material (Great Britain) Regulations provide a system of control for seed, cuttings and planting stock that is used for forestry purposes in Great Britain. This ensures that planting stock is traceable throughout the collection and production process to a registered source of Basic Material. In addition, it provides information on the genetic quality of the stock.
You only need to use FRM when replanting a woodland or for woodland creation. You do not need to consider FRM regulations if you are only planting trees in field hedgerows, in private gardens, school grounds, urban planting relating to industrial and domestic developments, landscape plantings for road and rail schemes, production of Christmas trees, or any other non-forestry purpose. For those purposes you can purchase either our FRM or our non-FRM planting stock. A woodland is defined in the UK Forestry Standards as land which is under stands of trees with an area greater than 0.25 hectare or more than 15 m in width, or with the potential to achieve at least 20% canopy cover.
The directive applies to Basic Material and Forest Reproductive Material of 46 controlled species and the genus Populus where the reproductive material is marketed for forestry purposes.
The forestry Commission maintains a public Register of Suppliers, where only registered suppliers like Trebrown Nurseries may market Forest Reproductive Material.
Basic Material is the plant material from which FRM is derived and consists of Seed Stands; Seed Orchards; parent material held by tree breeders in archives; individual Clones and Clonal Mixtures. They set-out four categories of reproductive material according to the Basic Material from which it is collected:
Source-identified FRM comes from general or specific locations within a single region of provenance or native seed zone with an altitude band but with no specific superior qualities recognised.
Selected FRM is collected from stands showing superior characteristics, e.g. better form, growth rate, health.
Qualified FRM derives from the selection of superior individual trees which have not undergone any form of testing.
Tested FRM derives from the selection of individual trees or stands which have been evaluated for genetic quality or, in comparison to accepted standards, have been shown to be superior.
For the most part Trebrown Nurseries caters for the supply of native tree & shrub species from the South-west for the South-west. For this, Source-identified FRM or even native species that are not even on the FC list ( The FC list is inadequate for not listing all British natives ). Some of Trebrown Nurseries’ orchards and seed stands are Selected FRM.
The Forestry Commission list of native species consists of only 46 species. We like to refer to this as the Scottish List. Because this list was clearly drawn-up by a forester in Scotland. It lists only the native species occurring in Scotland, and neglects at least 40 native species naturally occurring in our south-west region, which we at Trebrown Nurseries supply. The FC are reluctant to correct their list just yet, as they’ve only just published it. It will be up for review in the future.
Now there are ways to negotiate some of the discrepancies. For example, they include some titles like Sorbus aria sensu latu, where the latin "sensu latu" means "in the broad sense". Therefore we list all the Whitebeams, of which there are many species, under this category. However, this doesn’t cater for the list of Sorbus species that are not in the Whitebeam group, such as Sorbus domestica L. which is native to the south-west. Also for the Elms, they list only Ulmus glabra Huds., and neglect all the elm species from England & Wales. Of which there are about 70 species. Their argument being that Ulmus cannot be certified due to ongoing Dutch Elm Disease (DED) prevalence in Britain. But Ulmus glabra is prevalent to DED too, and several of our south-west elms are totally immune to DED. As a work-around to the short list there is a maximum 1000 tree rule for FRM that we can use, and even though we have many natural elm forests in Cornwall with more than 1000 trees in them, we only sell a maximum of 1000 elm trees in any order we send out.
For where suppliers of FRM also produce or store reproductive material which is not intended to be marketed for forestry purposes, then that material must be clearly labelled Not for forestry purposes. FRM originally intended for purposes other than forestry cannot be used for forestry purposes, unless the full requirements of the Regulations have been met throughout the production process. Where FRM suppliers market more than 1000 plants of FRM species for purposes other than forestry, the invoice for that material must state "Not for forestry purposes".
Therefore, you may plant fewer than 1001 elms in your wood and still stay within the regulations.
Ash dieback is a highly destructive disease of ash trees (Fraxinus species), especially the United Kingdom’s native ash species, Common Ash Fraxinus excelsior L. It is caused by a fungus named Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (H. fraxineus), which is of eastern Asian origin.
The disease is also known as "Chalara", ash dieback, and Chalara dieback of ash. Calling it "Chalara" ash dieback helps to distinguish it from dieback on ash trees caused by other agents.
Spread over longer distances is most likely to be through the movement of diseased ash plants. There has, up to very recently been a prohibition on importation and inland movements of ash seeds, plants or other planting material. This prohibition of inland movements has now been lifted across Great Britain.
Chalara is now well established and widely distributed, being present in every county. As such, there is no technical case and no purpose to retaining national measures against ash dieback. There is much more benefit to be gained from lifting the restrictions, so that tolerant ash trees can be bred, moved and planted.
Our Cornish Trebrown Nurseries' seed stands contain both trees which were infected and trees that have remained totally unaffected by the disease, thus the unaffected trees are considered tolerant ash trees. We are now resuming seed-collections from these tolerant trees and growing them on in our nursery. We will now get our ash stands re-certified for FRM nationwide, and you can order ash trees for planting the same as any other forest tree.
There are different grant schemes available for woodland creation projects. Projects need to use FRM, and you must produce a woodland creation plan which complies with the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS) of: Soils; Biodiversity; Climate change; Water; Landscape; Historic environment; and People. And your project must meet the grant scheme’s eligibility requirement.
Visit www.gov.uk/guidance/tree-planting-and-woodland-creation-overview to read about the grants that are currently available from the FC. Funding may be available from other organisations too.
