Well, learned something new about Ozark Chinquapins....

I have an Ozark Chinquapin started in Mercer County. This is really great soil that drains very well. I may even get a cross with an American Chestnut that’s close by.






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How did you go about growing those long taproots?

 

Honestly not sure - we didn’t do anything special. Only thing we did different than the instructions was pulled them out a week before we were supposed to on accident. I did spritz with water when the soil media seemed to dry out.


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So you left them in the baggie and peat until they were that long.
Mine were about 2” long when I planted them. The last time I was there, a month ago I had 9 of 10 up and growing. As wet as it has been and apparently will continue to be they certainly have plenty of water. They are on the side of a mountain and are tubed too so we shall see. I’m going back there tomorrow.

 

It was almost a mess, they intertwined with each other and we had slowly work them apart as to not damage the roots. And yeah, the rain has been steady near our property so far.

We found planting them at the edge of a ridge or on the slope was best, with plenty of sunlight. Our best planting was the road to my father’s stand that runs the military crest of a hillside. We did tube all of ours.

Wish the best for everyone growing them, and let’s see the pictures when y’all have them.


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I’ve had the same thing with Chestnuts getting a long radicle before I could plant it.
I checked all mine and I have one that I don’t think will make it. Something made a hole right next to the seedling and that pretty much dried it out. I think it was a ground squirrel, they are thick around there. It was the Same size as the rest , @6-8” tall. All the rest are looking good so far. I fertilized with 14-14-14 120 day Galaxy One slow release after they sprouted and it looks like it’s been good for them.

 

Ozark Chinquapin, no doubt, one of the largest left of a very rare tree in this mature state.

Very impressive tree. The best pic of one I have seen that shows its tree form. It's on private property.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2721207 ... 001059823/

"Ozark chinquapin, Johnson county, Arkansas in bloom last week 54 in circumference at chest high"

 

https://www.facebook.com/ozarkchinquapi ... ?__tn__=-R

Also, one from Alabama where they were thought extirpated.

"The Ozark chinquapin is not limited to the Ozarks. I know that sounds confusing. Ozark is is the name and with good reason most of the trees are found in the Ozarks. However, genetic work in combination with size and other defining features have shown there have been Ozark chinquapins in Alabama. In recent years they were thought to be extirpated from the state with only botanical samples to prove their former residence. And that is what we thought too.

Then we received an email from Jason Watkins inviting us to the land in Alabama to check out a tree he thought was an Ozark chinquapin. Well we are calling it official. This tree is quite tall, has burs consistent with the Ozark rather than the Allegheny and has no hairs on the young limb portions. Watkins discovery is fascinating in deed because it gives hope for preserving the genetics of these isolated population of Ozark chinquapin.

Keep looking and reporting what you think is an Ozark chinquapin. Now is a great time to identify the trees because they are blooming."

 

The trees in the 2 posts above may actually be Castanea alabamensis.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10....0EWfkxpYaEtXRxHFBHZWXVro9iduXSP7Z9wElYuSp35dQ

A summary from Dr. Paul Sisco posted on the TACF Growers listserv at PSU.EDU -

"Taylor Perkins was able to distinguish a morphologically and genetically distinct “variety” of chinkapin in north Alabama and northwestern Georgia that corresponded to a “species” that Ashe in 1925 called Castanea alabamensis. Taylor was able to examine Ashe’s type specimen of C. alabamensis, which had been preserved in the Herbarium of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Johnson (1988), who authored the last extensive description of North American Castanea, thought that C. alabamensis was extinct in its native range but had been an eastern disjunct population of what Johnson called C. pumila var. ozarkensis, the tree-like Ozark chinkapin of northwestern Arkansas, southwest Missouri, and northeastern Oklahoma. Other authors had said that C. alabamensis was equivalent to C. x neglecta, a putative hybrid of C. dentata and C. pumila.

Taylor, with the help of TACF members such as David Morris and Marty Schulman of Alabama, was able to locate living specimens of Castanea in northern Alabama and northwestern Georgia that looked exactly like Ashe’s type specimen of C. alabamensis.

Figure 1 in the PDF file shows the morphological differences between C. pumila var. ozarkensis, C. alabamensis, and C. dentata. The nuclear DNA analysis, as shown in Figures 2 and 4, showed that the C. alabamensis samples formed a group distinct from Ozark chinkapin, Allegheny chinkapin and American chestnut.

Taylor’s conclusions were that specimens of C. alabamensis as described by Ashe (1925) are still alive in their native range, that they are morphologically distinct from Ozark and Allegheny chinkapin and American chestnut, and that they are not the product of hybridization between chinkapin and chestnut.

These “Alabama chinkapins” are trees with leaves that look a lot like those of American chestnut. We first encountered specimens in “The Pocket”, a region of northwestern Georgia, and collected leaf specimens as “American chestnut”. When these trees flowered, however, we were shocked to see they had burs characteristic of chinkapin, having one nut per bur. Hill Craddock can tell you much more about this near mistake in collection. He actually sent leaves of these “Pocket Chinkapins” to Tom Kubisiak as representative of American chestnut in northwest Georgia. But because they have chloroplast DNA that is different from that of most American chestnut, Tom Kubisiak did not include them in his analysis of genetic diversity in American chestnut published in the TACF Journal in 2003 and a National Park Service publication in 2004.

This past Friday I worked in a beautiful 11-yr-old chestnut orchard on Chestnut Ridge in south central Tennessee. The trees there are 30-40 feet tall. See attached photo with the trees in the background, including one that is blooming. I was amazed to see chinkapin burs in the canopy of one of the tallest trees in the group. It is an example of C. alabamensis as described in this preprint.

If I’ve made a mistake in this description, I’m sur

"Planting a tree is an act of faith a little short of creation and it projects a man's hold upon the earth for as far beyond death as his imagination can reach." - Measure of the Year, Roderick Haig-Brown

 

So far, we have only had 1 nut not make it from the April 2019 planting. I will try to get some more pictures tomorrow.


Planted in April 2019


Planted in April 2018



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Gently, pulled the tube off to get a better picture of the one from April 2019.




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New growth coming on at the house. I’ll check the one at the farm this coming week.





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http://www.indefenseofplants.com/…/jlapz93osv1by8xtx9xzao1b…

Bost on C. ozarkensis.

It has some stuff I haven't heard before.

 

http://www.indefenseofplants.com/podcast

Part 2

He repeats that they will grow on most anything even limestone as long as it is well drained.

New tests show some trees are as resistant as Chinese chestnuts.

They have superior seed production and quality.

 

If you have spares I am game.

 

We apparently found a great spot for the Ozark Chinquapins on our property - southeast facing steep slope with full sun

This was planted in April 2018




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Ozark Chinquapin foundation seed?

 

Yes, foundation seeds. My son and I are members of the foundation. I remember the trees on our farm when I was younger. However, they had mostly succumbed to the blight, and were nothing but bushes/shrubs at that time. My brother and I called them hazelnuts. I'm not sure how my son ran across the foundation, but I'm excited at the prospects of continually planting them.

 

I ordered some Allegheny chinquapins today; we’ll be putting them in the ground next march. I was thinking about using short tree tubes, would that be a good idea?