Effects of seed origin latitude on the timing of height growth cessation and field performance of silver birch

The aim of this thesis was to increase our knowledge about the effects of seed origin on the timing of height growth cessation and field performance of silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) from different latitudes, with special attention paid to the browsing damage by moose in young birch plantations. The effect of seed origin latitude and sowing time on timing of height growth cessation of first-year seedlings was studied in a greenhouse experiment with seven seed origins (lat. 58o 67oN). Variation in critical night length (CNL) for 50 % bud set within two latitudinally distant stands (60o and 67oN) was studied in three phytotron experiments. Browsing by moose on 5-11-year-old silver birch saplings from latitudinally different seed origins (53o 67oN) was studied in a field experiment in southern Finland. Yield and stem quality of 22-year-old silver birch trees of Baltic, Finnish and Russian origin (54o 63oN) and the effect of latitudinal seed transfers were studied in two provenance trials at Tuusula, southern and Viitasaari, central Finland. The timing of height growth cessation depended systematically on latitude of seed origin and sowing date. The more northern the seed origin, the earlier the growth cessation and the shorter the growth period. Later sowing dates delayed growth cessation but also shortened the growth period. The mean CNL of the southern ecotype was longer, 6.3 ± 0.2 h (95 % confidence interval), than that of the northern ecotype, 3.1 ± 0.3 h. Within-ecotype variance of the CNL was higher in the northern ecotype (0.484 h) than in the southern ecotype (0.150 h). Browsing by moose decreased with increasing latitude of seed origin and sapling height. Origins transferred from more southern latitudes were more heavily browsed than the more northern native ones. Southern Finnish seed origins produced the highest volume per unit area in central Finland (lat. 63o11’N). Estonian and north Latvian stand seed origins, and the southern Finnish plus tree origins, were the most productive ones in southern Finland (lat. 60o21’N). The relationship of both survival and stem volume/ha to the latitudinal seed transfer distance was curvilinear. Volume was increased by transferring seed from ca. 2 degrees of latitude from the south. A longer transfer from the south, and transfer from the north, decreased the yield. The proportion of trees with a stem defect increased linearly in relation to the latitudinal seed transfer distance from the south.