Truffle Trees for Black Truffle (Tuber Melanosporum)

Truffle trees are young host trees whose roots already carry the black truffle fungus, Tuber melanosporum, when they leave the nursery.

Everything a plantation will produce in ten years depends on that plant being what it says it is. Spain has around 43 nurseries producing black truffle plants; a grower who has visited them says the good ones can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

This section explains what the plant is, how many a hectare needs and what to check before ordering.

What a truffle tree is

A truffle tree is a host tree, usually an oak, inoculated in the nursery so that the black truffle fungus lives on its roots. The fungus and the tree feed each other: a grower describes it as a symbiosis where each gives the other nutrients.

The consequence matters: if the tree lacks food, it gives nothing to the fungus. A healthy tree is the precondition for any harvest.

The host species used in Spain are the holm oak (Quercus ilex), the most common; the Portuguese oak (Quercus faginea), for stony and dry ground; and the hazel (Corylus avellana), which produces earlier.

Where the plant comes from: 43 nurseries in Spain

Around 43 nurseries in Spain produce plants inoculated with black truffle. The grower we work with has visited them and works with two.

His warning is worth repeating: many people picture a nursery as a stretch of land with a few pots. The nurseries that matter run controls on every batch.

How many truffle trees a hectare needs

The density the grower uses is 300 plants per hectare. His own arithmetic for a large project: forty hectares means about 12,000 plants.

That figure decides the size of the order and the lead time with the nursery. It is the first number to fix before anything else.

When truffle trees start to produce

The grower gives the timeline without decoration. If everything is done right, the first truffles appear at five or six years, in token amounts. Commercial production starts at eight to ten years.

The plantation begins to earn from ten to twelve years, peaks between twelve and eighteen, and a tree can produce until about thirty. It is, in his words, a very long-term investment.

• Years 5–6: first truffles, token amounts.
• Years 8–10: commercial production.
• Years 10–12: the plantation starts to earn.
• Years 12–18: peak production.
• Up to year 30: productive life of the tree.

Truffle trees in the southern hemisphere

Black truffle is now grown in counter-season in the southern hemisphere. The grower reports, from data he has not seen in person, that the largest producing plantations today are in Australia and New Zealand.

A buyer there works with the same species and the same plant, on a calendar six months apart.

Ordering truffle trees from Spain

Tell us the surface you plan to plant, the country and the season you are aiming for. The number of plants follows from the surface.

Live plants are subject to plant-health rules that differ by country, so the destination is confirmed at the time of ordering, before anything is committed. Prices are given with the quotation.