I’m familiar with the idea of assisted migration for trees to help them survive climate change – generally, planting them further north because the populations can’t naturally migrate fast enough to avoid the altering climate.

I’ve never heard of trying to get a Florida tree to survive in New Hampshire, however. The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript has a story about a local guy helping an experiment for Torreya taxifolia, sometimes called “stinking cedar”.

Ballard is now part of a group called “Torreya Guardians” that is studying how the tree grows in various climates, trying to gather information on where it might be able to survive and thrive. Though far, far north of its typical habitat, Ballard has been planting seedlings and seeds of stinking cedar in various soil and sun conditions on his property, to see how it takes.

So far, since starting the project in 2014, he said the results have been about 50/50 whether the trees survive.

The story is here.