Growing oaks questions

I'd like to grow some oak trees from acorns. I was wondering if there would be a difference if I got acorns from some real old trees or younger ones. There are some trees a couple miles from my cabin that I'm guessing are old growth. They are huge. Would it be any better to use those acorns since those trees have survived for a very long time or does it not matter?
 
If it were me age would not be my first consideration. The factors I would be interested in would be drop time (early vs late depending on your goals) and species.
One benefit of age might be if you have a tree that produces heavily at an early age. The acorns off that tree would be preferred over those from an old tree.
I have thousands of oaks and don't have a need to plant any, but I used to have a tree near my access road that was maybe 6 inches around. It was so heavy with acorns that it bent over with it's top almost touching the ground. That would be a tree worth propagating had the loggers not pushed it down to make room for a landing.
 
Lots of things to consider.....but all things being equal - I would either many those from an old tree (figuring age is a sign of health) or a real young one (considering the trait to bear acorns earlier in life). It all depends on what your after.
 
OakSeeds is a member who used to post frequently on the old forum

Unfortunately for us,he hasn't posted much recently

He is a master growing oaks from seed and perhaps he can weigh in for you on this

bill
 
Funny, I just returned from a nature walk around the farm, and spent some time looking at acorns that I want to collect in the upcoming weeks. I have white, red, swo, and pin oaks to choose from. When I look at trees that I planted in the late '90's producing acorns, I wish I'd started sooner.


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Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time is today.
Took the words right out of my mouth.!!
That is an ancient proverb that actually is not about planting trees but living life in the here and now vs procrastinating . One of my favorites.
 
Another factor, consider gathering acorns from tall, straight oak trees that have good form and fewer big low branches. In about 80 years, those trees will have some serious value. Somewhat a function of the competition from other trees around them and whether they self prune as they grow. In indiana, the DNR offers a line of select seedings, you can read about this program at the link below. If not in Indiana, you can copy their methods and obtain acorns from the trees with the best traits. I'm all about wildlife benefits, but having valuable timber is a close second, even if it's the grandkids that will see the benefits.

http://www.in.gov/dnr/forestry/files/Select_Seedlings.pdf
 
Another factor, consider gathering acorns from tall, straight oak trees that have good form and fewer big low branches. In about 80 years, those trees will have some serious value. Somewhat a function of the competition from other trees around them and whether they self prune as they grow. In indiana, the DNR offers a line of select seedings, you can read about this program at the link below. If not in Indiana, you can copy their methods and obtain acorns from the trees with the best traits. I'm all about wildlife benefits, but having valuable timber is a close second, even if it's the grandkids that will see the benefits.

http://www.in.gov/dnr/forestry/files/Select_Seedlings.pdf
A couple of years ago I had the luxury of spending some time with family in Indiana on a Purdue property in early November. They use that property for forestry. Man, I have never seen oaks like the ones they had there. Huge. And prolly wasn't a branch for the first 50'.
 
I like to collect from the more mature trees. Odds are they have withstood and adapted to the weather conditions in your area more than a smaller tree would have. That should be passed on down to its offspring. I also wouldn't worry much about the larger the acorn the larger the seedling. We collect thousands of acorns a year and have never seen a huge difference in this. Even if the two different sizes are collected off the same tree.
Just be sure to not let the acorn get too dried out. Keep stored in a refrigerator over winter if you are not going to sow immediately. If it is in the white oak family it would be good to sow this fall, as they tend to send radicals out in storage. We have better luck with Red Oaks if we store over winter in an open ziploc bag in the fridge and planting in the spring. Less chance of critters getting to them outside.

Good luck!
 
ND said ..." I also wouldn't worry much about the larger the acorn the larger the seedling. We collect thousands of acorns a year and have never seen a huge difference in this. Even if the two different sizes are collected off the same tree."

There is some evidence that bigger is better ... especially if the acorn is damaged after planting. The evidence ...
A study at the Croatian Forest Research Institute found that bigger acorns produced taller saplings with more bio-matter (in non-technical terms, they weighed more). This was confirmed in a follow-up study by the Serbian Institute of Forestry (692KB, PDF). It is therefore reasonable to conclude that acorn size does matter, with larger acorns leading to larger saplings. There are no studies on what happens next, and whether this benefit is carried throughout the tree’s life. However, we believe it’s likely the benefit is only an early competitive advantage, and that growth rates will even out as the trees mature and they are subject to less selection pressures. They say .... "So there you have it, acorn size does matter, at least for early growth!"

Sci Rep. 2015; 5: 8112.
Published online 2015 Jan 29. doi: 10.1038/srep08112
PMCID: PMC4309963
Damage to seeds has been found to cause decreases in germination rates, reduction of seedling performance, and even death of seeds or seedlings13,14. Fukumoto and Kajimura15 show that survival of hypocotyls and radicles of Quercus variabilis is severely affected by high-level cotyledon loss. Kennedy et al.16 found that seed reserves have an important effect on the early performance of Lithocarpus densiflora seedlings. Cotyledon removal just after the emergence of seedlings poses significant negative impacts on seedling growth of oaks17. (persons who remove the acorn shortly after germination to reduce damage by predators may be making a mistake - my observation; not part of the article). Significant consequences of cotyledon extirpation of seedling growth in oaks have been widely observed in previous studies18,19,20. Existing literature indicates that energy reserves in cotyledons play an important role in supporting seedling development; therefore, damage to seeds can negatively influence seed survival or seedling development. Our data showed that post-cut acorn mass, rather than initial mass, appeared to be a better predictor of seedling performance (e.g., seedling height, leaf number, seedling dry mass). At lower levels of cotyledon damage (<60%), large acorns showed no advantage over small ones with respect to seedling dry mass. However, seedlings from large acorns appeared to perform better than those from small ones at higher levels of cotyledon damage (i.e., 60% and 65%), partially supporting our prediction that large acorns sustain damage to cotyledons better than small-sized acorns.
This last paragraph is included simply to demonstrate they used widely accepted statistical measures to produce their results.
"We used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 16.0) for data analysis. ANOVA was used to determine if there were differences in the initial (post-peeling mass) and post-cut acorn mass between the control and treatment groups. One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine whether the dependent variable was normally distributed. Linear regression was used to determine if initial mass (independent variable) of an individual acorn predicted the final total biomass (dependent variable) of the resulting seedling using only control acorns. Linear regression was also used to determine the effects of post-cut acorn mass and percent acorn damage (dependent variable) on germination rates and seedling performance (dependent variable). Linear regression was also used to determine the correlation between seedling dry masses (dependent variable) and exact cotyledon loss amounts (independent variable) in all treatment groups, to see if large acorns tolerated cotyledon damage better than small ones. Cox regression was used to test the difference in acorn removal rates between large and small acorns following arc-sine transformation."
Sorry for the relatively long post :)
 
Looks like I stand corrected! Sounds like that will be my experiment next year. While out collecting today I made it a point to collect larger and smaller acorns off the same tree to watch the difference in the two. I'll let you know what I find out. Planting acorns large or small is always a great idea!
 
Thanks Bill; I try to contribute information that may be relevant to discussions on this site. We can all learn from each others experience and maybe make our habitat work more effective and enjoyable.
 
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