Planting Trees For Rain

So I don't know if this is common knowledge, but trees create rain. No really they do.

With the help of a gentleman named Donald Kenning, I found a list of plants rank ordered by how much rain creating bacteria they created. It's in this video at the 7:30 mark.

Apparently their data is derived from a study done in 1978 on 95 plant species which measured their numbers of rain creating bacteria. I have attached the study as well.



So as you can see from this image, Box Elder Maple ranks at the top of the list by a wide margin followed by zinnias at a distant 2nd. Secondly, this study found almost none of the bacteria on coniferous species. Who would have thought that box elders would ever become useful? Does anyone else know of any research on this topic?

So, anyways, I thought you all would want to know this. As for me, I am buying a pound of box elder seeds from sheffelds and will be spreading it in the canyons and arroyos in southern colorado. If we all get this tree going in the south west US, and volunteer to take nuisance beavers, and install rock dams, in 20 years we will have terraformed this entire area.

Usually I look at the helicopter seeds dangling the air as a warning of work to come in the form of raking... but now I'm seeing something of value!

I am going to harvest a bunch this year and perhaps encourage some box elders to grow in less than appreciated areas with time. I know of some woodland that has suffered from a microburst that could use some encouragement.

There is a saying everybody should know.

The rain follows the forest and not the forest the rain..

This thread might be of interest to others:

Greg said, "A forest of trees has been shown to create rain in at least two ways, through deep root systems that pump water up from the depths and transpire it out through their leaves and through using those leaves as a substrate for rain forming bacteria to reside on.  What's not to love about trees!

https://permies.com/t/90979/rain-permaculture

a study done 45 years ago and seemingly none of our agricultists have bothered to take any notice of it ,instead they advise/order us  to plant an alien species of conifer to offset our carbon ,bloody amazing, saved that download for further reading i have ,thanks

anyone has found any quantification of how much rain which trees induce? because condensation nuclei are still not rain... I have troubles finding well done studies

Hans, in a world of global warming, the question of what trees would cause the most precipitation should be one of the most important questions. However, there is almost no research into that question. There is far more work being done on seeding clouds with silver compounds at great expense and unknown health/environmental effects. If I had the time and data available, I would catalogue every forest by dominant tree type, their prevailing wind direction, and annual precipitation of the surrounding area. If trees are indeed making a difference in precipitation, then we should see which type of forests create the most effect. If anyone has seen anything close to that, please post a link.

Skyler Weber wrote:If I had the time and data available, I would catalogue every forest by dominant tree type, their prevailing wind direction, and annual precipitation of the surrounding area. If trees are indeed making a difference in precipitation, then we should see which type of forests create the most effect.

Yes - cataloguing forests as a whole makes sense to me. There are farmers planting polycultures and demonstrating that mixed planting build soil far faster than mono-cultures.

I would love to see more research. The link above specifically mentions "Box Elder" (Acer negundo) or called here in Canada, "Manitoba Maple". Does anyone know how much more or less, my local maple "Bigleaf Maple" (Acer macrophyllum) also called Oregon Maple matches the effect of Box Elder? Or might it exceed it?

Similarly, it would be wonderful to know how much my fruit trees contribute to making rain.

I am sure that we need to revert many of our forests from mono-cultures back into polycultures. We have ample evidence that mono-cultures damage the soil and the ecosystem at large, but we don't have to return to random polycultures everywhere to get positive effects (random may be the best, but for example, well-managed coppiced forests in Britain have been shown to be good ecosystems for both birds and reptiles - better than old-growth forests.)  

I was actually surprised at how many annual plants did this as well. That said, the chart is based on "gram of leaf" and there are a whole lot more grams of leaf material in our huge Bigleaf Maple in the back field, than in all the annuals I normally plant!