What a Tree Costs at the Nursery, by Container Size and Caliper

A canopy plan, a bid schedule and a newspaper cost guide all need the same figure, and none can find it: what one tree costs before anyone plants it. The answer turns far less on species than most people expect. Across seven widely grown American landscape trees, the national median at a #15 container on September 21, 2026 ran $60.00 to $75.00, and at #45 $225.00 to $265.00. Container size sets the price; species barely moves it.

This page takes them at every size three or more American growers publish, from the HortOS price pages on September 21, 2026, and sets them against how nursery stock is graded: the container ladder, caliper in inches, and balled-and-burlapped against container-grown. It draws on AmericanHort, the USDA Forest Service, Clemson Cooperative Extension and the Arbor Day Foundation. These are prices at the nursery gate, ex tax, before freight, planting, staking, water and margin: not a quote, and not an installed cost. No United States edition of the HortOS Plant Price Index exists yet, so no figure here is an Index figure.

Quick facts

Item	Fact
What the number is	Median wholesale trade price at the nursery, ex tax, one price per grower, before freight, planting and margin. Growers' lists, fetched September 21, 2026.
The container ladder	Liner, #1 (one gallon), #3, #7, #15, #25, #30, #45, #65, #95, #100, #200 and up. The number is the pot's nominal gallon capacity, not the tree's size.
The range in one day's trade	A liner at $1.00 to $2.50; a #300 live oak (Quercus virginiana) at a median of $2,150.00.
A #15 shade tree	$60.00 to $75.00 across all seven trees here. Live oak sits at $65.00 across 69 growers, most between $45.00 and $80.00.
A #45 shade tree	$225.00 to $265.00 across the same seven: about four times the #15 money for three times the pot.

How American nursery stock is sized

Two sizing languages run side by side in the American trade, and a specification that mixes them causes most pricing arguments.

• Container class. The number is a nominal class, not a measured volume, and it describes the pot rather than the tree. Two growers can both sell a true #15 and ship trees a foot apart in height.
• Caliper in inches. Shade trees are graded by trunk diameter at a fixed point on the trunk. Caliper is the language of field-grown and balled-and-burlapped stock, and what street tree and park specifications call for.

The American Standard for Nursery Stock holds them together. AmericanHort publishes it and has been involved since 1921. It sets common methods for measuring a plant, stating a size, relating height to caliper or width, and deciding whether a root ball or container is large enough for a given plant. ANSI Z60.1 was approved in April 2014, ANSI Z60.2 in April 2025.

Container-grown and field-grown are two production systems, not two grades. A container tree carries all its roots into the hole; a field-grown tree is dug, and the ball that arrives is a fraction of what it had in the row. Clemson Cooperative Extension notes both can be planted through the year given well-developed roots, and that planting too deeply and watering wrongly are the most common serious errors after that.

What each rung of the ladder costs

Live oak is the clearest ladder, because enough growers price it at nearly every rung. National medians, ex tax, growers pricing each size in brackets:

Liner $1.65 (5), #1 $4.00 (7), #3 $10.25 (32), #7 $25.00 (17), #15 $65.00 (69), #25 $142.50 (58), #30 $132.50 (92), #45 $265.00 (108), #65 $350.00 (50), #95 $492.50 (4), #100 $550.00 (40), #200 $1,200.00 (17), #300 $2,150.00 (3).

The step up is close to a doubling each time the pot roughly doubles: $10.25 to $25.00 to $65.00 to $132.50 to $265.00. Divide price by nominal gallons and the ladder flattens: $3.42 at #3, $4.33 at #15, $4.42 at #30, $5.89 at #45, $5.50 at #100 and $7.17 at #300. Per gallon of root run a big tree is dearer, but only by about double across the whole ladder. Most of the extra money buys more of the same thing.

Species matters much less: at #15 the seven trees span $60.00 to $75.00, at #45 $225.00 to $265.00. Choosing #45 over #15 is the budget decision, worth about $190.00 a tree.

The ladder is not perfectly monotonic. For four of the seven lines the #25 median sits above the #30 median, and for Green Giant arborvitae the order reverses. They are near-substitute grades, so treat #25 and #30 as one rung.

Why the price per caliper inch climbs faster than the price per gallon

The standard complaint about large trees is that they cost far more per inch of caliper than small ones. That is true, and it is geometry, not greed.

• Caliper is a diameter, and price tracks volume. Doubling a trunk's caliper roughly quadruples its cross-section and multiplies the mass of the tree several times over. Divide a price that scales with volume by a measure that scales linearly and the per-inch figure has to rise.
• The root ball has to keep up. The American Standard ties the minimum root ball or container to the size of the plant, so a large tree cannot ship on a small ball. Soil, burlap, basket and the machine that lifts it all scale.
• Every inch is a year the grower has carried. Land, irrigation, fertilizer, pruning, spacing and pest control are charged against a tree for every season it stands in the row or the can. A #45 tree is the same tree several seasons later, and the seasons are the cost.

The HortOS price pages size trees by container and by a single field-grown line, not by caliper, so there is no dollar-per-inch figure here to quote. The spread within that line is the best evidence the data offers. Live oak field grown has a median of $292.50 across 74 growers, but its low and high run $125.00 to $585.00; Shumard oak runs $102.00 to $340.00 around $149.00. That spread is very largely caliper, which is why a quote line reading "field grown" without a caliper is not a price.

What changes by state

State medians on one tree at one size differ by enough to be worth freight. Live oak at #15 runs $48.50 in Louisiana, $58.50 in Georgia, $60.00 in Texas, $65.00 in Florida and $77.50 in North Carolina: a 1.6 times spread, or $2,900 on a hundred trees. Green Giant arborvitae field grown runs $41.00 in Oregon to $202.50 in Georgia, eastern redbud field grown $37.00 in Tennessee to $200.00 in Maryland. Where a tree grows fast and many nurseries carry it, prices converge.

• The Southeast. Florida and Georgia carry the container production for live oak, magnolia and crape myrtle, usually at or below the national median.
• Texas and the upper South. Texas prices live oak and Shumard oak deeply, often under Florida at the same size. North Carolina is a major field and container region, dearer on southern lines and competitive on arborvitae and redbud.
• The Pacific Northwest. Oregon is the cold-climate field production center and holds the lowest state median here for Green Giant arborvitae field grown.
• North and West. Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan supply the northern field and balled-and-burlapped trade, and California its own container market.

Trade prices by container size, seven American trees

National median trade price, ex tax, one price per grower, growers in brackets. A size publishes only where three or more growers price it.

Below #3, liners run $1.00 to $2.50 and #1 medians $3.50 to $10.00. Above #65 the data thins: Shumard oak #95 $455.00 (5 growers), #100 $492.50 (8), #200 $1,200.00 (5); Natchez crape myrtle #100 $450.00 (7); Little Gem magnolia #100 $525.00 (8).

What to watch for

• Treating a container class as a specification. A #15 is a pot, not a tree. Eastern redbud at #7 runs $28.75 to $135.00 across 11 growers and at #15 $59.10 to $162.00 across 27. Specify caliper or height alongside the container, or the quotes are not comparable.
• Reading a thin rung as a market price. Where three to eight growers price a size, one updated list moves the median. Eastern redbud at #45 rests on three growers, live oak at #300 on three. Plan on the deep rungs: #15, #30 and #45.
• Publishing a wholesale price as a cost per tree. A grower's price is the smallest line in a planted-tree budget. Freight, the hole, staking, mulch, two summers of water and replacing failures exceed it.
• Assuming bigger stock is safer. A tree planted too deep or watered wrongly fails at any size, and Clemson Cooperative Extension names those two as the most common planting errors. The Arbor Day Foundation is explicit that burlap, wire basket and rope come off at planting.
• Costing trees without valuing them. i-Tree, the peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service, puts the benefit side in the same document.

Getting it right

1. Decide the size before the species. Container class is worth several times more to the budget than the choice between common shade trees. Settle #15, #30 or #45 first.
2. Specify against the standard. Cite the current American Standard for Nursery Stock from AmericanHort, giving container class and caliper or height, so every bidder prices the same tree.
3. Check the live figure. The trade price pages carry the low, median, high and state medians for each size; the price check takes the plant lines off a quote and returns the wholesale range for each.
4. Price the neighboring state on a large order. State medians can differ by half again or more; the grower directory lists wholesale production nurseries by state with their availability.
5. Budget the ground, not just the tree. Soil preparation, the planting crew, staking and water through the first two summers decide whether the tree survives. None of it is in a nursery price.

A word of caution

These are medians of published wholesale trade lists as they stood on September 21, 2026, from the live HortOS price pages, not from an Index edition; a United States edition of the HortOS Plant Price Index does not exist yet. The figures move as growers update. They describe what the trade is asking, not what any grower must sell at, and say nothing about the height, caliper, form or health of the tree behind a listing. For a caliper-specified price, ask two or three growers in the supplying state; for a planted cost, ask your state forestry agency's urban and community forestry staff.

Sources

• AmericanHort: American Nursery Stock Standards: what ANSI Z60.1 defines.
• USDA Forest Service: Urban and Community Forestry: the federal urban forestry program.
• i-Tree, USDA Forest Service: software valuing urban tree benefits.
• Clemson Cooperative Extension: Planting Trees Correctly: planting method and common errors.
• Arbor Day Foundation: Planting Balled and Burlapped Trees: burlap, wire and rope removal.
• Texas A and M Forest Service: state community forestry and grants.