Manzanita

We are a wholesale supplier of decorative manzanita branches and manzanita wood. We have natural and sandblasted branches from as small as 12″ to as large as 12 feet tall and more!

Buy Natural Manzanita Branches Buy Sandblasted Manzanita Branches We supply wholesale decorative branches for weddings, centerpieces, floral, crafts, home and business decorations, and more. Each decorative manzanita branch is hand harvested and trimmed to bring out it’s best appearance. All leaves are removed and, most of the dead twigs are removed. What is left is a branch that is clean and ready for your application. If we feel that any of our centerpiece branches are not decorative enough to stand alone, they are usually made into something else, such as bird perches or sold as filler for a reduced price. We have a reliable and constant supply of manzanita, since it is grown and harvested on our own land.  We also occasionally buy from other landowners when demand requires it.

Beware of Your Manzanita Source

Many manzanita suppliers claim to grow their own manzanita, which is only partly true. It is not planted or grown in agricultural fields the way you may picture. It is only grown and harvested from the wild. When someone claims they grow their own, it simply means they own the wild land that manzanita is naturally growing on. There are some question about the damage that harvesting manzanita may be doing to many of the areas where it grows. Much of the manzanita being sold comes from California and other parts of the arid Southwest. Manzanita is one of the dominant species in the chaparral plant communities of this region. These plant communities are unique to that area and are highly adapted to be able to survive in their hot and dry environment. These habitats can be very wildlife rich and many species of animals depend on manzanita.. Now we have people harvesting manzanita from these slow growing and slow to recover complex plant communities for decorative manzanita branches and other uses. They are harvesting the mature plants, but without fire, manzanita seeds do not sprout to replace what is taken. And manzanita, contrary to common belief, DOES NOT sprout back from the roots or stump. Now what was once chaparral, usually becomes barren, or grassland, and becomes vulnerable to being taken over by invasive weeds, such as cheatgrass. Manzanita, as well as some other chaparral species, require fire in order to reproduce. The seeds that mature plants produce drop to the ground and can lay dormant for many years. Lightning sparked fires are natural in these habitats and historically burn though every few decades. Manzanita and other chaparral species have adapted to fire and actually depend on it for their long term existence. When a wildfire burns through these areas it typically kills most of the vegetation, but at the same time, it cracks the hard shell on the manzanita seeds that have been laying dormant on the ground. This triggers the seeds to germinate, and new manzanita and other shrubs, including ceanothus, quickly grow back and create a new chaparral. But once the manzanita is harvested, it will no longer be there to deposit seeds to sprout the next time a fire comes through. Seeds can last in the soil for several years but many are eventually eaten by wildlife or will eventually decay. Then when a fire does come, there may not be any seeds available to sprout. There are problems with manzanita illegally being taken from public lands. Much of the commercial material is cut by private land owners on their own land too. This is legal, but the ecological affecs can still be questionable.

How We are Different

Our manzanita branches come from a different type of plant community. It comes from the Pacific Northwest in a wetter climate at the edge of where manzanita naturally grows. Manzanita is also different in this area in that some seeds can sprout without the assistance of fire. It is still unknown if this is a genetic difference in the manzanita in our area, or if it is simply because of the wetter climate. Unlike more arid regions, we have soils that remain wet all winter long. It may be that this soaking of the seeds for months at a time may soften the shells and allow them to sprout without fire. This is a region where forests of large conifers such as fir, pine and cedar are the dominant climax species. As well as oak savannas. There is natural manzanita chaparral in the area, but typically only on the hottest driest slopes and areas with soils that are too poor to support dense forests. Manzanita can also be a minor component in the forests, but is historically kept in check by wildfire and being shaded by the larger trees. Human intervention through decades of wildfire suppression and logging has allowed manzanita to grow up very thick in the forests where it then competes with the other trees for water and nutrients. Since the government started putting out natural wildfires in the early 1900’s the entire ecosystem has been changed and manzanita has been allowed to grow too thick into tangled brush land in areas that would naturally be dominated by forest. It can take over quickly after logging or wildfire and will compete with or completely shade out and suppress the other young trees that would otherwise grow into a new forest. These highly overcrowded manzanita choked forests are more vulnerable to disease and wildfire than they were before human intervention. All of our manzanita is exclusively harvested on our own private land where we are restoring the ecosystem back to a more natural state. We are thinning out the excess trees and harvesting the manzanita to allow the larger trees that are more suited to the area more resources to grow. This leaves a forest that is faster growing, more disease resistant and more resistant to the catastrophic wildfires that are burning out of control in the West every year. Each site is evaluated to determine which plant communities are best suited to grow there. In areas that are more suited to growing manzanita, we do controlled burning to stimulate seeds to grow back, and in some of these areas where healthy manzanita is already established, we thin the manzanita so it can continue to grow. If an area is determined to be better for growing forests, or an oak savanna, the manzanita is cleared or thinned and other native trees are encouraged to grow. In many cases by natural seeding from nearby trees, and in some cases we will plant them if necessary.