Suppliers of reproductive material in Spain are legally required to provide a suppliers document and to label every batch of material not only with the information required under the Directive but also the number of the lot, the suppliers document and the suppliers number. The Decree specifies that the number of the Master Certificate of Provenance (for which templates are published) must be included on both the label and Supplier’s document. For seeds the usual additional information is also required.
In practice, as no template is specified in the Decree for the Suppliers document, producers of forest reproductive material may design their own, although in some Autonomous Regions, eg Catalunya and Madrid standard Suppliers Documents are used. The Supplier’s document used in Catalunya is shown below.
In the Catalunyan template there is space for the Master Certificate of Provenance number but there is none in that for Madrid.
Typical Nursery In Galicia with both bare-root and container production
Within Spain as such information is only required when planting subsidies are involved many suppliers only furnish this information on demand. It is important therefore when purchasing material from Spain to request that the complete information is provided.
Examples of a delivery note and label in use within Spain when no subsidies are involved are shown below. These are the documents which might accompany exported plants unless a request for additional information is made at time of placing an order.
A Selected Stand of Pinus sylvestris in Northern Spain
Regions of provenance and nomenclature
For the seventeen main forest species of Spain detailed maps of the regions of provenance have been published and can be seen by clicking here.
The regions of provenance for all seventeen species, of which all but Pinus uncinata, Quercus canariensis, Q. faginea and Q.pyrenaica are included in Annex 1 to the Directive, are different for each species. These regions define the distinctive areas in which the selected stands have been identified and from which seed certified as selected can be collected. Another system operates for source identified collections (see below). The most regions (20) are found for Pinus pinaster and the fewest (1) for Quercus canariensis. All are numbered sequentially from 1 up to 20. The maps also show special conservation areas for most of the 17 species.
Maps for Quercus robur and Pinus sylvestris are shown below.
For Quercus robur there are five restricted Provenance areas from which no seed is allowed to be collected due to the scarsity of the species in those areas.
Production of cell-grown plants inside polytunnels
For the less common forest species as well as the indigenous trees and shrubs used for restoration of the landscape for which only source identified collections are made a different method of defining the regions of provenance has been used. The whole of Spain including the Mediterranean and Atlantic Islands has been divided up into a total of 57 different regions. These regions are shown and defined along with the relevant species in Annex XI, XII and XIII of the Royal Decree.
A map of these multi-species regions of provenance is shown below.
FEPEX
The Federación Española de Asociaciones de Productores Exportadores de Frutas, Hortalizas, ..represents the interests of the forest nurseries in their dealing with the Spanish Authorities. Its website (in Spanish) can be accessed by clicking here.
