Research and analysis

Tree supply report, data analysis and appendix

Published 3 April 2024

Considerations and limitations

Production data was collected between August and November 2023 from some of the largest 15 private forest nurseries in England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as the 2 public nurseries in England and Scotland. These include the 13 nurseries surveyed in 2022-23, plus 4 additional nurseries, all newly established.

Due to the lack of some up-to-date figures, previous year’s data have been used for 2 of the private nurseries, using the assumption that these nurseries’ production hasn’t substantially changed in a single year. We estimate that these 17 nurseries grow more than 90% of the saplings used in forest and woodland planting in GB.

We have decided to leave the figures of Christmas trees and hedging species as given by the producers. It should be noted however that the report mainly targeted nurseries which produce forest and woodland trees, therefore this report does not aim to be representative of the production of Christmas trees and hedging species.

Nurseries have been asked to provide the species and number of trees produced at their site expected to be ready for sale in the 2023-24 season. Because data was supplied during the growing season, it relied on sample extrapolation and/or predicted figures rather than actual counts.

From conversations with stakeholders, imports and exports of forestry trees are considered marginal, and have been included in this report wherever declared by nurseries.

This report aims to illustrate the overall production of saplings for woodland and forestry planting in the 2023-24 season in Great Britain. Unless otherwise stated, ‘tree’ and ‘sapling’ are used interchangeably and refer to stock destined to woodland and forestry.

Amenity and urban planting are outside of the scope of this report, although we cannot exclude some overlap.

The given figures represent overall saleable tree production in Great Britain in 2023-24, but do not intend to represent availability for sale, nor market demand.

The complete species dataset used for analysis can be found in the Appendix.

Number of trees produced

Figure 1: Bar chart showing the number of saplings produced. 160.1 million were produced this season, compared to 151.8 million last season.

The total number of trees produced by the nurseries surveyed in 2023-24 is of 160 million, around 8 million higher than last year (Figure 1).

The majority of this increase is due to the added capacity of new entrant nurseries, although the 13 nurseries who participated last year have also seen a small production increase from 151.8 million to 152.9 million (data not shown).

Number of species produced

Figure 2: Bar chart showing the number of tree species produced by the nurseries. 129 species were produced in 2023-2024.

The nurseries surveyed have produced a total of 129 species, which is a similar figure to the previous season (Figure 2). A complete list of all the species can be found in the Appendix.

Broadleaved and conifers

Figure 3: Pie and ring chart representing the percentage of broadleaves (lighter shading) versus conifer (darker shading) trees produced. The inner and outer pie charts shows how many trees have been produced for each group. Broadleaves make up a third of the overall production, but around 2 thirds of the number of species produced.

The 2023-24 season has seen a definite increase of broadleaf saplings in both percentage (from 26% to 32%) and absolute numbers (from 40 million to 51 million). Conifers have seen a slight decrease from 112 million to 109 million, but still represent more than 2 thirds of the overall production. An overview of the annual change within species is provided in Figure 9.

The increase in overall broadleaf production is largely due to new entrant nurseries specialising in broadleaves. Many existing nurseries have also communicated an increase in broadleaf production as well as alternative timber species in the past few years. They have however also expressed frustration with the volatility of the market and planting, which prevents them from making robust decisions about species production for the future.

Figure 4 shows broadleaves as a percentage of the total production in each nursery (mean 53%, median 58%). Again, the apparent shift towards broadleaves compared to the previous year (mean 40%, median 28%) is largely lead by the inclusion of new nurseries which specialise in broadleaf production. Specifically, we can now see three nurseries which exclusively produce broadleaves. However, the majority of nurseries still grow both coniferous and broadleaf trees.

Figure 4: Dot plot showing the percentage of broadleaves grown at each nursery. Each dot represents a nursery. Most of the dots are spread between 2 and 75%, with 3 dots around the 100% broadleaf mark.

Figure 5: Dot plot showing the number of species grown at each nursery. Each dot represents a nursery. The majority of the dots are clustered between 10 and 35 species, with some just below the 90 mark.

There is a great variety in the number of species grown at each nursery, ranging from only 5 sapling species to almost 90, as shown in Figure 5. Larger nurseries tend to stock more species.

Top species produced

At nearly 70 million, Sitka spruce dominates sapling production in GB. It is followed by Scots pine at 16 million. Hawthorn is the third most-produced species in 2023-24, closely followed by Norway spruce, Downy birch, and Douglas fir (Figure 6).

Refer to Figure 9 to see the change in production from 2022-23.

Figure 6: Bar chart of the top 20 species grown in GB. Sitka spruce tops the chart at 69.4 million trees, followed by Scots pine at 15.9 million and hawthorn at 8.9 million. The darker coloured bars represent conifer species, and the light coloured bars represent broadleaf. Note - the measurement bar for Picea sitchensis fades at the end for ease of interpretation.

Figure 7: Bar chart of the top species grown in GB from 21st to 40th. The unit of measurement has changed from M (million) to K (thousand). The darker coloured bars represent conifer species, and the light coloured bars represent broadleaf.

Figure 8: Bar chart of the top species grown in GB from 41st to 60th. The darker coloured bars represent conifer species, and the light coloured bars represent broadleaf.

Figure 9: Bar chart showing the change in production in percentage for each species compared to last year. The most produced species are at the top. Sitka spruce has decreased 6%, while Scots pine has increased 14%. Hawthorn, Blackthorn and Beech have increased respectively by 28, 37 and 61%.

Figure 9 broadly reflects the increased broadleaf production seen in other parts of this report. Hedging species (hawthorn, blackthorn, beech, hazel and hornbeam) show a marked increase in production, although this can be partly attributed to the addition of new hedging-specific nurseries, which were not included in last year’s data.

While conifers overall show a decrease in production, Scots, Lodgepole and radiata pine, Western hemlock, Japanese cedar, European larch, and Coastal redwood have all increased numbers from last year, potentially driven by an increased interest in alternative timber species.

It should be noted however that these figures are based solely on 2 years of data and as such do not necessarily represent a trend. Various external factors such as seed availability, weather conditions and market assumptions underpin nurseries’ production.

The data shown throughout this report are production and not sales figures, and therefore do not directly reflect tree demand in GB.

Appendix

Group	Scientific name	Common name	Number of trees
CF	Abies alba	Silver fir	250,200
CF	Abies amabilis	Pacific silver fir	51,000
CF	Abies balsamea	Balsam blue fir	19,400
CF	Abies concolor	White fir	27,100
CF	Abies fraseri	Fraser fir	189,700
CF	Abies grandis	Grand fir	504,300
CF	Abies koreana	Korean fir	8,200
CF	Abies nobilis	Noble fir	95,800
CF	Abies nordmanniana	Nordmann fir	1,598,500
CF	Abies procera	Noble (red) fir	190,100
BL	Acer campestre	Field maple	580,500
BL	Acer palmatum	Japanese maple	20,400
BL	Acer platanoides	Norway maple	82,400
BL	Acer pseudoplatanus	Sycamore	1,179,300
BL	Aesculus hippocastanum	Horse chestnut	1,900
BL	Alnus cordata	Italian alder	101,900
BL	Alnus glutinosa	Common alder	3,881,000
BL	Alnus incana	Grey alder	37,700
BL	Alnus rubra	Red alder	114,400
BL	Alnusviridis	Green alder	36,700
BL	Berberis darwinii	Darwin’s barberry	10,000
BL	Berberis thunbergii	Japanese barberry	16,900
BL	Betula nana	Dwarf birch	50,800
BL	Betula pendula	Silver birch	3,996,100
BL	Betula pubescens	Downy birch	7,429,700
BL	Carpinus betulus	Hornbeam	1,221,100
BL	Castanea sativa	Sweet chestnut	258,300
CF	Cedrus atlantica	Atlas cedar	75,000
CF	Chamaecyparis lawsoniana	Lawson’s cypress	99,800
BL	Cornus alba	Siberian dogwood	43,000
BL	Cornus sanguinea	Common dogwood	365,400
BL	Corylus avellana	Hazel	1,550,200
BL	Cotoneaster bullatus	Hollyberry cotoneaster	13,800
BL	Cotoneaster franchettii	Franchet’s cotoneaster	7,500
BL	Cotoneaster simonsii	Himalayan cotoneaster	28,100
BL	Crataegus monogyna	Hawthorn	8,931,600
CF	Cryptomeria japonica	Japanese cedar	361,000
CF	Cupressocyparis leylandii	Leyland cypress	10,000
BL	Cytisus scoparius	Common broom	15,800
BL	Eucalyptus gunnii	Snow gum	5,000
BL	Eucalyptus nitens	Shining gum	5,000
BL	Euonymus europaeus	European spindle	123,400
BL	Fagus sylvatica	Beech	2,209,800
BL	Fraxinus excelsior	Ash	2,000
BL	Hippophae rhamnoides	Seaberry	24,100
BL	Ilex aquifolium	Common holly	112,700
BL	Juglans nigra	Black walnut	39,300
BL	Juglans regia	English walnut	41,400
CF	Juniperus communis	Juniper	128,200
CF	Larix decidua	European larch	461,000
CF	Larix eurolepis	Hybrid larch	166,100
CF	Larix kaempferi	Japanese larch	4,000
CF	Larix laricina	Tamarack	7,000
BL	Laurus nobilis	Bay tree	5,000
BL	Ligustrum ovalifolium	Garden privet	12,100
BL	Ligustrum vulgare	Wild privet	115,100
BL	Malus sylvestris	Crab apple	499,800
CF	Metasequoia glyptostroboides	Dawn redwood	23,000
BL	Nothofagus alpina	Rauli beech	33,000
CF	Picea abies	Norway spruce	8,170,900
CF	Picea lutzii	Lutz spruce	10,000
CF	Picea omorika	Serbian spruce	180,200
CF	Picea orientalis	Oriental spruce	111,000
CF	Picea pungens glauca	Colorado blue spruce	48,400
CF	Picea sitchensis	Sitka spruce	69,351,300
CF	Pinus contorta	Lodgepole pine	2,836,800
CF	Pinus nigra maritima/corsicana	Corsican pine	34,400
CF	Pinus nigra nigra/austriaca	Austrian pine	15,300
CF	Pinus peuce	Macedonian pine	190,000
CF	Pinus pinaster	Maritime pine	54,000
CF	Pinus radiata	Monterey pine	57,000
CF	Pinus strobus	Eastern white pine	18,000
CF	Pinus sylvestris	Scots pine	15,937,800
CF	Pinus taeda	Loblolly pine	15,600
BL	Platanus x acerifolia	London plane	5,000
BL	Populus alba	Silver poplar	200
BL	Populus hybrid	Hybrid poplar	5,000
BL	Populus nigra	Black poplar	33,000
BL	Populus tremula	Aspen	1,637,200
BL	Prunus avium	Wild cherry	1,060,500
BL	Prunus cerasifera	Cherry plum	48,100
BL	Prunus domestica	Plum	2,000
BL	Prunus laurocerasus	Cherry laurel	113,000
BL	Prunus lusitanica	Portoguese laurel	23,700
BL	Prunus padus	Bird cherry	294,600
BL	Prunus spinosa	Blackthorn	2,965,700
CF	Pseudotsuga menziesii	Douglas fir	6,144,600
BL	Pyrus communis	Common pear	11,400
BL	Quercus cerris	Turkey oak	5,200
BL	Quercus ilex	Holm oak	26,900
BL	Quercus palustris	Swamp oak	1,600
BL	Quercus petraea	Sessile oak	3,050,900
BL	Quercus robur	Pedunculate oak	2,186,500
BL	Quercus rubra	Red oak	98,500
BL	Rhamnus cathartica	Purging buckthorn	109,700
BL	Rhamnus frangula	Alder buckthorn	68,400
BL	Robinia pseudoacacia	Black locust	51,500
BL	Rosa arvensis	Field rose	7,100
BL	Rosa canina	Dog rose	527,400
BL	Rosa rubiginosa	Sweet briar rose	11,500
BL	Rosa rugosa	Red Japanese rose	36,600
BL	Rosa spinosissima	Scotch rose	6,200
BL	Salix alba	White willow	13,100
BL	Salix aurita	Eared willow	379,900
BL	Salix caprea	Goat willow	1,207,800
BL	Salix cinerea	Grey willow	675,700
BL	Salix fragilis	Crack willow	18,000
BL	Salix lapponum	Downy willow	3,000
BL	Salix nigra	Black willow	12,800
BL	Salix pentandra	Bay willow	22,600
BL	Salix repens	Creeping willow	5,000
BL	Salix viminalis	Osier willow	47,200
BL	Sambucus nigra	Elder	196,900
BL	Scandosorbus intermedia	Swedish whitebeam	13,900
CF	Sequoia sempervirens	Coast redwood	250,500
CF	Sequoiadendron giganteum	Giant redwood	54,000
BL	Sorbus aria	Common whitebeam	68,400
BL	Sorbus aucuparia	Rowan	2,164,300
BL	Sorbus torminalis	Wild service tree	98,300
CF	Taxus baccata	Yew	112,000
CF	Thuja plicata	Western red cedar	825,200
BL	Tilia cordata	Small-leaved lime	248,400
BL	Tilia platyphyllos	Large-leaved lime	16,200
CF	Tsuga heterophylla	Western hemlock	391,700
BL	Ulex europaeus	Gorse	70,000
BL	Ulmus glabra	Wych elm	34,200
BL	Ulmus minor	Field elm	500
BL	Viburnum lantana	Wayfaring tree	43,000
BL	Viburnum opulus	Guelder rose	77,300