View article

Despite increasing evidence of seed limitation in forest ecosystems, data remain sparse on spatial patterns of seed rain at large (>1 ha) spatial scales. We monitored seed rain (28.5 m²) throughout five northern hardwood forest fragments (27 ha sampled across 14‐km² area) in southeastern Michigan over two years. Four fragments were nearest neighbors (300–700 m), yet varied in species composition, providing the opportunity to detect landscape‐scale seed exchange. Of the 37 species of woody plants present in the seed rain (98 032 mature seeds), only three (Betula papyrifera, Ostrya virginiana, and Ulmus americana) had widespread seed dispersions within all fragments containing resident sources (seed in >70% of traps in each fragment). Seed dispersions, measured as the percentage of traps within a fragment receiving seed, differed among species using different dispersal vectors with animal‐dispersed …