Douglas Fir

Pseudotsuga menziesii

Hosts 1 caterpillarPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers April to May; fruits August to October
Type	tree
Sun	Full sun
Water	Low
Soil	pH 5.5–7
Hardiness	zone 4–7
Mature height	30 m
Mature spread	7.5 m
Spacing	5 m
Years to maturity	20
Bloom	Apr–May
In bloom	April May
Fruit	Aug–Oct
Native to	AB

needles about 2.5 cm long; a single straight leader

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

34 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 26 herbarium specimens and 257 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Northern Continental Divide south AB: 427 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 230 records, high confidence
Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 33 records, high confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 9 records, medium confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 6 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

9 documented relationships.

nectar for

Andrena angustitarsata Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Andrena prunorum Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Andrena scurra Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Colletes gypsicolens Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Lasioglossum anhypops Specimen records from ecdysis.org
Lasioglossum sisymbrii Specimen records from ecdysis.org

caterpillar host for

Cooley Spruce Gall Adelgid Specimen records from mycoportal.org
Marmara oregonensis Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Pine Needle Scale Specimen records from bins.boldsystems.org

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Young shoots, seeds, bark (inner)

Buying it

About $60–$150 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (large specimen tree); AB retail as of 2026