Contorta just keeps on giving

Date: 18th December 2025

A recent email from Nick Ledgard highlighted the above and the seriousness of a delay in control due to insufficient funding to act proactively on all fronts. The graph below shows how just a single year of missed control can double the amount of seed disseminated. The data for the contorta seed/cone graph is not from any formal research programme – it was gathered on Flock Hill station by Jenny Ladley and Nick back in 2016.  

It also shows how the numbers of contorta seed exponentially increase. We now know also that contorta can produce seed as early as a couple of years of age as evidenced from the pohoto below taken at Flock Hill station in 2024

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