WISCONSIN — Imagine a magnificent white pine tree stretching 150 feet into the sky. From the ground, someone raises a rifle to shoot a small branch near the top. The branch falls onto a lower limb still 75 feet high. Using a giant slingshot and rope, the people below disentangle and retrieve the branch.

This is no tall tale. It’s a true story of how a remarkable tree from the Menominee forest in northern Wisconsin — informally named the Big Tree — was used to grow new trees that share its genes and are more likely to be resilient against insects and diseases. Forest Health Protection staff were able to collect these branches, called scions, from the Big Tree and others, thanks to their collaboration with the Menominee Nation on projects to enhance the Eastern Region’s genetics program.

The story begins at the Oconto River Seed Orchard in northern Wisconsin. It was established in 1967 by the Eastern Region to produce tree seed for reforestation projects. The seed orchard’s specialized and carefully designed tree plantations contain 50 or more genetically distinct parent trees of superior quality. The seeds produced by these parent trees are genetically diverse and locally adapted.

The seed orchard also has a small propagation facility where trees are grown from scions, which are detached shoots or buds taken from mature trees. A scion can then be grafted to the stem and root, called rootstock, of another tree. Grafting unites tissues from these two different trees in a way that allows the tree’s natural healing mechanisms to fuse them into a single tree.

What’s the advantage of grafting trees from scions over growing them from seed? With grafting, the new tree is likely to thrive because it’s an exact genetic copy of the tree the scion was taken from — the “parent” — which was already identified as a superior specimen. Grafted trees will also produce their own cones more quickly than trees grown from seed.

With its many superior specimens, the Menominee forest is a unique and exceptional resource for genetics of forest trees in northern Wisconsin. In recent years, their collaboration with the Menominee Nation enabled Oconto River Seed Orchard staff to visit the Menominee forest to collect scions from butternut trees that exhibited potential resistance to butternut canker disease.

Then in 2023, Menominee Nation forest manager Ron Waukau invited Oconto River Seed Orchard and Forest Health Protection staff to collect scions from some exceptional white pine tree specimens, including the Big Tree. Collecting scions from the top of these tall trees was a challenge, but a worthwhile one. That’s because scions from the top are the best for grafting, as they are preprogrammed to produce cones and grow “up” instead of “out” like lower branches.

Staff grafted scions from the white pines to include in the northern Wisconsin-origin white pine orchards. They also returned some copies to the Menominee for them to plant where desired. The grafted trees will produce seed and act as a genetic backup copy of the parent tree. According to an update from regional geneticist Nick LaBonte, the Big Tree’s descendants are growing quite nicely.

Waukau graciously invited staff to collect genetic material from other species in the Menominee forest, which has exceptional old-growth red pine and many other species with unique local genetics, as well as some of the Midwest’s northernmost populations of white oak. The staff is developing white oak and red pine seed orchards with the intention to collect samples from those species and possibly others.