Minnesota offering more cash for black spruce seed

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota’s black spruce seed supply is low, prompting the state Department of Natural Resources to offer more money to people to collect them to meet spring orders for reforesting.

The state is paying $85 a bushel, up from $70 last year.

The DNR’s stash of black spruce cones is so low that the agency is “kind of starting from scratch,” said Mike Reinikainen, the DNR’s forestry silviculture program coordinator. “We really need them by the end of February.

“We’re getting down to the wire here.”

Black spruce is a peat-loving workhorse tree across northern Minnesota, and those black spruce peatlands are very good at storing carbon, a key greenhouse gas. The lowland coniferous forests are also the year-round home of the spruce grouse as well as plants such as the carnivorous pitcher plant.

The short-needled pines are grown on public lands with working forests; they’re harvested primarily for paper and packaging. The DNR uses the seeds to reforest about 6,000 acres of black spruce forest every year.