Chinquapin Chestnut: It’s Natural

Posted on April 10, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

A New Chinquapin Variety-“Resilient”

One of the first oaks I grew at my farm was the Turkey Oak, Quercus cerris. The tree has a huge range in Europe and grows to massive sizes. I used a wide variety of seed sources including arboretum and overseas germplasm. I was able to find another nursery that had them too. Each tree was radically different with leaves that had huge variations from cut leaf to sawtooth in shape. I made seedling selections based on winter hardiness and fast growth rate. The trees were planted at the top of my hills where it was windy and dry.  After a couple of decades, I noticed there were callus-like expansions on the trunk occurring near the soil line. It looked like the trunk exploded. I thought I had failed on the hardiness part of my selection process when a forester who was familiar with the tree in its native range told me, “That is natural. Even trees in the wild have that.”  Oh, it’s natural.  Thank goodness it’s natural.  The pressure was off. How do you spell relief? N -A -T- U- R- A- L 

Quercus cerris grown from seed and whitetailed deer.

This ‘it’s natural’ view of nature has helped me understand the chinquapin chestnut. The chinquapin chestnut has a huge range and like the turkey oak it’s a survivor in some of the toughest soil and climatic conditions.  The teeny pea sized nuts are delicious fresh off the shrub. The yields are incredibly high and the nuts just fall out of the husks with a light shaking. Yet the plant itself does struggle with chestnut blight. For the chinquapin with its multiple canes, this is not the end of the universe. Like a blueberry bush, the young canes will fruit in great abundance as they skip through the meadow of inflictions. It does weaken the canes and probably shortens their fruiting age but the nut production continues for years after blight. It is thought that it is both genetic resistance and a physiological response from the younger stems of which blight is unable to stick to it and grow. It’s natural professors. The pressure is off. Whew. Not to worry!

In the early nineties, I planted 10 chinquapin shrubs in one-gallon containers from the Greg Miller nursery in Ohio. He had grown the plant longer than anyone I had known. Today I have four of the original plants along with several seedlings produced by my plants. Chinquapin rarely hybridizes on its own because the flowering times do not overlap with other chestnut trees.  This natural selection process of good and non-good is based on what plants continue to produce nuts with minimal damage caused by chestnut blight. It is based on how fast and how long the plant can survive in the natural world of chestnut blight. You can make selections on the low amount of damage and increased resistance to blight. It may not be zero at first but over time your population will move away from the negative effects of chestnut blight. My best guess is that the break away is at ten percent of the population. Those 10 percent could easily create an industry from the chinquapin. I see it as flour on a bush with an ease of mechanical harvest and plenty of creative ideas using the nuts as the ultimate gluten free flour easily grown using only organic methods. It also doesn’t require some sort of massive breeding program to make it happen. Anyone can do it and do it right now not decades later.

“Resilient” Chinquapin Chestnut

“Resilient” Chinquapin Chestnut

Resilient is the most vigorous selection of chinquapin chestnut showing natural immunity to chestnut blight even on the largest of canes. It tends towards producing larger canes free of chestnut blight having nearly the double the caliper of other nearby seedlings. Chestnut blight is much less likely to attack the stems and weaken the plant. Resilient chinquapin is not a hybrid and is more tree like than other seedlings. Its bark is smooth. No blight has been found on the trunk for over 25 years. The branches of Resilient are rarely damaged and appear not to shed due to over yielding like some seedlings do.  This shedding is done as the tree matures which forces more growth into the dominant limbs. Although not entirely immune to chestnut blight, it appears this is one of the most resistant seedlings from the groupings I have at my farm. One of its seedlings also has this same growth habit and good resistance to blight for over a decade despite having blight in many nearby American hybrid chestnuts. This variety can be grown from grafting. Grafts onto Chinese chestnut is the best rootstock to use. Seedlings from it may also show excellent resistance but not enough is known on a population level yet. Small nuts ripen starting in mid August. Seeds need to be planted immediately for propagation. Roots emerge without dormancy. Yields are heavy. Cross pollination is needed with another chinquapin chestnut otherwise no nuts will form. Any seedling chinquapin will work for cross pollination but not another species. Tree can be managed as a shrub while replacing diseased canes with new sprouts near the base similar to a lilac bush. Removing old canes improves the yields of the plants over time as the root system grows. Natural seeding occurs with this species. It happens surrounding the shrubs when the nuts hit the ground and are pushed into the soil by deer or humans harvesting. That too is natural.

Resilient Chinquapin Chestnut. Strong excellent branching. Background is American hybrid chestnut with a lot of dead wood.
This cane made it past the 12 year mark which is typical for the species. (At least for my farm in southwestern Michigan.) Yields begin in 3-4 years and will continue for a decade prior to removal.
Pruning improves vigor and yield of older shrubs and is necessary if you want good nut production. Castanea pumila seedling.
Chestnut blight will form on young branches once in a while however it appears to have only a minor effect. (At least in my plantings after 40 years.) Here you can see the damage being done along with the normal callus of a woody shrub trying to wall off the damage. It is natural and something you have to live with while you slowly move the population away from the disease. It’s not that hard. Anyone can do it.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Hip to Be: Wild Roses and Their Fruits

Posted on April 1, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

“Hip to be or not to be. That is the question.” Philosopher Rosa Pomeifera

The idea of cultivating roses for their fruit is a funny thing. If you think about it, uncultivated wild roses often produce hips in great numbers. Why bother?  You immediately see the value of wild seedling species. On the other side of the rose selection model, you have the modern floral roses. They are like racehorses or wine grapes. They are highly selected and created by those with botanical intellects the size of planet earth. They are patented and ‘released’ by Conglomo Nursery. Whereas seedling hip roses are pure emotion and love. They are ‘released’ over the landscape by birds containing a starter fertilizer along with prepping the seed via scarification in their intestinal tract. Those released seeds often create rose bushes like the multiflora rose which become mini-nurseries for other fruiting plants for the birds. It’s a gratuitous act of kindness and not entirely as random as you might think.

When I plant rose seeds at my farm, I head off to my barn and have a cuppa organic green tea and burn sandalwood incense. Within the floral world, Conglomo Nursery is hammering down Sanka and sweating over their labor force in the hot Texas sun. Conglomo worries about what celebrity will endorse their creations while blessing them with metal indentification tags that will be good for 10,000 years. This difference tells the story of how we feel about roses and their ability to heal the landscape as well as grace our gardens. For me, it was a mission and pursuit of fruit roses specifically grown for their vitamin rich hips. I grew over 40 different species and hybrids in the course of three decades. I grew everything from seed. For a while I collected hips wherever I went. Nature has the best methods. You need real world experience captured in a seed. You let disease and insects come. You love the rose chafer. You crave black spot. You hope for cane borers. These Rosa nightmares for most growers are the strengthening agents for my plants. You have to find strong and flourishing plants in the midst of rose hell. There are no categories and with it no limitations. You let the climate refine and destroy your crop. Finally, you will have a fruit rose rich in vitamins and flavor. The seeds I produce now do not require the same trials and tribulations but refinements can always be done. Don’t pay a lot of attention to the unknown market or practical application on a larger scale for your fruiting rose creations here in the United States. Now it becomes a personal mission to spread the seeds like my bird friends but without scarification and the starter fertilizer.

The Hips to Be

The Apple Rose: Rosa villosa

Rosa villosa (Pomeifera)

It generally takes a generation or two to really get an idea of what potential lies within a species to grow as a new food plant.  This was the case for the apple rose. I heard about it from another nursery and then found seeds of it produced in an arboretum. Arboretums can provide food and crop possibilities to the public. Normally they are not thought of that way. The first generation looked promising, however the plants were overrun with Virginia Mountain mint and Indian rice grass in this particular planting area. This greatly lowered their vigor. The second time I took those seeds and did a production in my greenhouse of several hundred plants. This produced 4 individual plants that flowered at one and two years old. This extreme precocity is indicative of heavy fruit production especially if it is combined with increased vigor. This is the wide open avenue for fruit production. Those plants were then spaced several hundred feet apart in a mixed oak, lilac and plum plantings. More or less, it takes about a decade to really see what you have found. Now you can taste and test everything to make sure your super hips are actually delicious to eat and not just a fiber filled Vitamin C capsule. This is the final step on what is now becoming the superhighway of fruit production for hip roses. You have both a population and a variety should you need it. It is the hip to bring the rose into fruit production under all cultural circumstances for its vitamins, seed oil and syrup.

Apple rose hips are best when slightl bletted like medlars. The fruit will be smooth textured at that time.

 The apple rose is a rose species found in the mountains of Europe. Its first incarnation came as the ‘Wolley-Dod’s Rose’ as a semi-double highly floriferous selection called ‘Duplex’ prior to 1770. Its cultivation as a fruit rose has been explored before but nothing in modern times. It is mentioned as ‘some commercial importance’ in the writings of Gerd Krussmann, Cultivated Broad-Leaved Trees & Shrubs (1978).

Join me for tea and incense as we create health via the rose fruit. It is the hip to be.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

This is a first part of all things hip. The second part will contain other species hips.

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Black Mulberry

Posted on March 17, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Central Park black mulberry.

There is a magnificent specimen of black mulberry filled with lustrous green foliage in Central Park. I had my brother help me photograph one of the branches. To me it was a miracle because it isn’t suppose to survive in a New York winter. The black mulberry is the premier mulberry in terms of it’s cultivation as a fruit plant. It’s called a cultigen by people who are aware of it’s origins and distribution. Cultigen means it is of obscure origin which may not have a wild counterpart to it anymore. People have eaten the black mulberry for millenniums. I had previously grown this species at my farm from grafted named varietal plants. These were the huge white and black berries so well known in commerce in Pakistan and India called ‘Hunza” named after a culture noted for long life and great health. Most international food stores have these selections dried like raisins in clear cellophane packages. After a mild winter, the trees were destroyed well below the graft union. I next went to the grafted hybrids. They lasted a little longer when one fruited in my largest polyhouse next to some overgrown red mulberries. Many of the nurseries that produce this tree are in Florida and California. Taking a plant grown in the south and then plunked down in the north was too extreme. Next up for me were the seed sources. Hungary, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Southern Europe-Mediterranean regions are the main sources. Mulberry seed is plentiful, but quality is lacking. I think it might be overdried and old. I noticed on a social media post that someone was using the dried mulberry paste at the food store to generate seedlings. Evidently the seeds were still viable. My first batch of seedlings showed promise despite the great amount of winter damage on the twigs.  I remember finding one tree out of two hundred after the first winter that survived minus 20 F with zero damage. If you look up the hardiness of the Morus nigra tree you will see a question mark near the Zone 7 indicator. This means, “I am not sure but 7 seems right” zone. The mega tree in Central Park was a pointed reminder of the questionable nature of giving plants zones in the first place. One tree points the way for a human to follow. One of those humans is me.

Oikos Tree Crops black mulberry. Mixed planting using newer seedling selections with trident and cutleaf types along with extremely fast growth rates compared to other seedlings. The deer love the foliage of the black mulberry and will do anything to push the trees over to browse the trees.

ON THE HARDINESS ISSUE OF TREES

It is both the seed source and a physiological response to low temperatures that allows most trees to tolerate cold temperatures beyond their indigenous and current cultivated ranges. You can take any warm loving plant and move it farther north. The best way to do that is from seed and then have several plants. I have Louisiana cypress on my hills in Michigan. I have Nuttall oaks from southern Georgia. Neither has experienced winter damage. To make that happen you grow batches of seedlings and wait to see what happens. Eucalyptus, palms, tea plants and even oranges can be grown far north. There is flexibility within the species to some degree. Either from a hybrid standpoint or an isolated population found in a northern location that is self-breeding, you can find plants able to grow in locations outside of its normal domain.  The limits can’t be reached unless you have a population of “like-minded” plants all of which can interbreed and create an unwavering seed source able to withstand the speeding train of winter. This applies to apples in the subarctic region and to oranges in southern Michigan. You need a population not a cultivar.

Black mulberry fruits forming early in the year.

This is something that is missing in the world of fruit selection where the cultivar is king and everything else is a worthless seedling. Here, it is reverse. It is the opposite of Luther Burbank breeding. Seedlings produce the best fruit for the climate which can then be recreated using more seedlings. Cultivars are a stopping off point like a train at a station where you go to meet a friend. You give it a hug. Have some coffee. Talk about old times. Remember when I sprayed you. Remember the mulch. You laugh. You cry. Then you say goodbye. That is the cultivar. Now, wave goodbye. I know. It’s emotional. You get attached to the cultivar. It was nice knowing you, cultivar. Thank you for your progeny. Now all of your progeny is cultivar and constantly improving while you quietly enjoy your farming life. There is less drama. Certainly you can create more cultivars. That is not bad. The future requires a river over flowing the banks and not a trickling brook level of cultigens and cultivars. The trickling brooks are the patents and the misguided scientists who have exploited plants like they were wind up toys. The plants can do it better than a human. They are in on the ground floor of breeding. You are not. You are the facilitator not the owner of the plant. It’s a relationship between human and plant. That is what you are co-building.

Morus nigra seedling at the Oikos Tree Crops farm.
White Black Mulberry Morus nigra

From seed:

Mulberry has a tough seed coat and this coupled with a cold dormancy makes the seed require a year in the soil to help break down the coat and a cold dormancy prior to sprouting. There is also the opposite where no dormancy of any sort is required. This seems to be the case with Morus nigra. You would normally just surface sow the seeds like the birds do and the plants come up in a week or so. When you buy mulberry seeds from the different seed companies here in the United States, it is hard to know how they have been handled and when they were colleted and processed. We would just sprinkle them on a flat of soil media and cover them with a bit of sand or screened peat and let nature take its course. Mulberry seeds sprout very quickly and will continue sprouting for up to two years. It’s a surprise tree. You will never know when it will happen.

From seed everyone wants the pure mulberry. I think they are all pure. Under the banner of complex heterozygosity the mulberry does not care about your love of pure. Pure in this sense means combining the nearest plants into one unadulterated whole. The whole reflects the individual as a universal mulberry oneness. Is this cosmic or me lost in interpretation? Both. The mulberry has other plans from an evolutionary standpoint. It’s an out breeder. It can be dioecious, monoecious or both on the same tree or not on the same tree. More than the apple it hides its origins to the point even modern day genetics has thrown its hands up. I like that. It’s a plant with a plan.  I’m a follower. One fruit and you too will follow.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

White Black Mulberry bark on young tree.
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Direct Seeding: Get Your Satchel and Plant a Forest

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
American persimmon seeds in the first phase of processing for seed planting.

Everyone wants to create a forest. It’s a natural desire. How hard can it be?

You start with a blank canvas and add paint in the form of seeds or trees.

Like the book “The Man Who Planted Trees” by Jean Giono, your mission is to grow trees where there are none. You naturally want to align yourself with the fictional character, Elzéard Bouffier. You have a satchel filled with acorns and an iron planting bar and you drop acorns into your divots one at a time across the barren landscape. When Jean Giono was interviewed he said his goal was to “make trees likeable but more specifically make planting trees likeable.”  Having an activity that is easy to do and refreshing is ideal for tree planting. In the end, your reward is a forest.  The direct seed method he was describing is possible and real. You could do that with many species of plants by distributing seeds in a way that allows for regeneration without huge amounts of resources. This was something I was intimately familiar with only because I grew many genus of trees in my nursery from seeds.  I soon discovered the secrets of dormancy and the means to release the seeds at the right time to gain the maximum tree percentage.  Could this fictional story be applied to a larger scale model to make reforestation less expensive and more efficient?  Absolutely. Get your satchel and iron divot.

My fathers Christmas tree planting bar surrounded by hickory nuts I fruited at my farm.

Reliable, Consistent and Repeatable Is the Likeable Planting of Trees

American persimmon seed

American Persimmon   Diospyros virginiana

Of all the years I grew American persimmon from seed there was no mammal or bird that ate the seeds after they where planted in the ground. For this reason alone, it is a great species for direct seeding. With good seed you easily pass the 90 percent success rate. The seeds are inexpensive and if handled properly can be primed for dormancy for spring planting too. They are competitive enough to compete with other shrubs and grasses. The deer and rabbits avoid them. The foliage is poisonous to all mammals.  The plant regenerates a strong response from the root crown should it be clipped off.  Plant the seeds an inch or two deep in groups of four and soon your persimmon forest will come to life. It is an unstoppable seedling tree. You can plant them like beans. They all come up.

Pawpaw seed

Pawpaw  Asimina triloba

 Pawpaws are incredibly easy to direct seed into shrubby areas or forested areas. The seed  requires partial shade to get past that first year. After fall planting, the seeds will sprout very late into July. It is not possible to direct seed pawpaw in open sunny areas unless you haul brush or create artificial shade in some way.  It is possible to direct seed into multiflora rose, autumn olive and buckthorn because all of these shrubs provide a great benefit to pawpaw. The benefits are living shade cover, large amounts of organic matter with minimal competition of grasses and the retention of soil moisture during the summer months. Pawpaws can easily be seeded in mature oak forests. Placing 3-4 seeds two inches deep in the fall is the best method. The seeds contain toxic alkaloids and are never consumed by small mammals. The trees are rarely browsed by deer or rabbits. It is a perfect tree for direct seeding into both forested and non-forested shrub filled areas.

Chestnut   Castanea x, mollisima, seguinii, dentata x, sativa x hybrids and species

Chestnut was the preferred nut in THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES. Why not try? If you put this delicious nugget of goodness in an open field it soon becomes a magnet for chipmunks, thirteen-line ground squirrels as well as blue jays and brown thrashers as they sprout in the spring. It was a series of unfortunate events that I found a partial solution in terms of prevention. I coated the nuts prior to planting (they were not sprouted) with eucalyptus, neem and fish emulsion oils. This kept the nuts intact for the winter dormancy. For the life of me though, I couldn’t figure out how any chestnut tree could ever regenerate at all until I started digging up sprouted trees. It turned out that the leaf litter combined with the sharp spiny husks along with deer walking overtop of this combination creates the perfect seed bed. This combination of encapsulated seed in the husk means no animal is willing to risk lips, nose or tongue lacerations to yank out the nut out of a burr.  They are incredibly sharp. My suggestion would be to carry one burr for one seed and like a puzzle put them together while planting and encapsulating the delicious nut in a coat of spiky armor. The seed will sprout in the husk and grow around it. Now you will need two satchels for the chestnut. One for burrs and one for seeds.

Turkey Oak Quercus cerris One of the most beautiful of acorns and easy to direct seed.

Oaks  Quercus robur x, macrocarpa x, alba x , bicolor x. hybrids

Acorns are easy to direct seed.  As my oak forest matured, I began to wonder if some oaks were better at self-seeding than others and why.  My aha moment came twenty years later when I noticed that the natural hybrids of burr, white, English and swamp white oaks were really making the rounds. I found them everywhere in a wide variety of soils and locations.  What was happening was that despite the normal predation and movement of the acorns by small mammals, it was the fastest sprouting selections that were creating the highest number of trees directly in the field. This has a simple explanation. The fast growing and fast sprouting white oak hybrids create a tap root within a few days of hitting the ground. If it is not disturbed and left long enough, the acorn creates a fully formed tree with an epicotyl capable of creating a seedling. It only needs dormancy in the winter to throw its top. At this point, it does not matter if the acorn is ripped off the root.  By now it is too late and the tree is secure.  The acorn has done its job. It’s created a new tree and can feed an animal as well as help the plant distribute itself throughout the landscape. Win, win, win. If a human like you and your satchel filled with acorns enters this equation, you will want to plant a little deeper going into the 4-inch “zone of least discovery”. This will give the acorn a little more time to create the sprouted root without disturbing the delicate procedure. The iron bar is not too heavy now and the oak forest is right behind you as an all space filling lumber and edible acorn heaven on earth.

Shellbark Hickory grown from seed.

Shellbark Hickory Carya laciniosa

Every now and then when I was digging plant orders in the spring, I would find a random shellbark hickory nut in my plantings. Since I know these trees by the individual fruits they produce, I was surprised at the distance these nuts were carried by squirrels. Some were hauled over 400 feet away from the parent tree.  I was also surprised at the ‘lost nuts’ not dug up during the winter or spring months. There was a lot of them compared to nearby black walnuts.  After careful excavation of one year shellbark hickory trees in an old greenhouse space, it turned out that the lost hickory nuts were planted intentionally deep to avoid detection by other squirrels. This behavior equated to a higher tree percentage compared to black walnut.  They specifically choose areas that were relatively free of tree and shrub competition and far from the parent trees. They were also taking a chance being in the open to birds of prey.  Slipping into this natural regeneration of an ecological theater as a main actor is not too hard. You would fill your satchel with hickory nuts and use a wide spacing by planting shellbark hickory nuts every 100 feet or so. There is no need to protect the nuts. Plant them deep into the 6 inch zone. Shellbarks have a high tree percentage due to their large seed size which equates to a large germinative capacity. Going deep does nothing to slow down the tree from sprouting into a seedling.  Your forest is taking shape and the shellbark hickory is rich in food and timber creating health for the world.

Your satchel planting is working as you traverse the barren landscape. Your forest is taking shape. The trees are at home wherever home is for you. You help define the forest and give it a use far beyond the botany of yesteryear.  It is likeable to everyone and everything.

Enjoy, Kenneth Asmus

Turtle herding lima beans.

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The Pecan As a Tree Crop in Michigan

Posted on February 25, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

One of the most underlooked tree crops for Michigan and other northern short season areas is the pecan. The pecan has a ton of research behind it. It has the mechanization. It has shakers, crackers, dryers and sorters. It has mechanized pecan picker uppers whatever that is. It has a human support network like no tommorrow! Go ahead and buy that Costco bag of pecans. (Sure. The sugar encrusted cinnamon ones. Do it. I dare you. ) Look at the countries of origin and how many countries grow pecans. The U.S.D.A. has devoted resources for its improvement over a span of 100 years. Hey, it even has its own extractors for oil. After its debut almost 50 years ago as a northern crop from the University of Nebraska and the germplasm rescue from the Northern Nut Growers Association few farmers took on the challenge. The most northern forms of it are viewed as hobby like and okay for the horticulturally adventurous. This highlights the oh-so-slow acceptance of a new crop in a new environment. To me it is the poster child of an unknown known crop. The drain pipe for the ultra-northern pecan is plugged.

I was unsuccessful to get it into nursery production outside of my farm. I tried to give my cultivars away to other nurseries. It’s very specific in rootstock and scion capabilities and requires a production system that demands strict protocols. To make a northern pecan industry in Michigan possible you would need large areas devoted to it. I would say a thousand acres would be a good start. This would allow for the costly mechanization and processing facilities. For Michigan that would be mostly in the southern region of the state. You would need a willing and able farmer based enthusiam for the crop because having others produce the crop with you allows for an industry to develop. I’ve seen individual English walnut orchards come and go only because there is no broad support for it. It requires time and patience to establish an orchard. The only thing I can think of that is a little like this is the Northern Spy apple. On a standard rootstock, Spys take 17 years to fruit. Even seedling pecans are not that tardy and grafted pecans are half that to producing nuts. Of course, money has to be devoted specifically for this crop to kick start it into commerce. Let’s treat it as not experimental and not native to Michigan because it is neither. We should treat it like a crop and raise it to fruition under organic conditions. For the northern pecan, this is very easy. It’s a food and oil crop widespread throughout the world. It’s been done before. There is no frost damage as it flowers in June. There are no insects or disease and the nuts literally shake out of the trees covering the ground.

In synchronizing with the fall season, its home is here in Michigan for this indigenous North American plant.

The mature northern pecans I have at my farm were all found originally along the Mississippi River in central Illinois and Iowa. It turned out that people had a natural inclination to move the pecan inland and northward. Some say the crow did it and others say boat loads of nuts were carried in canoes long ago by the Native Americans even into southern Wisconsin. The season for ripening was the limiting factor not the trees hardiness. What would happen if you took a southern selection farther north is the nuts never get past the milk stage. The nuts never fill and solidify because the heat units are too short. Michigan has roughly half the heat units needed for most pecan varieties. This was exactly what I found at my farm. The term northern was widely applied and northern was not northern enough for some seed sources that I grew. I really had to do research on the nuts I was buying for nursery stock. Through the Northern Nut Growers seeds from Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota soon filled my seedling plantings. They were northern enough and then some.

It’s ripe. It’s September.

Today I am harvesting older and over planted pecan trees for my woodworking projects. My northern seed grown trees from the James and Shepherds farms in northern Missouri are being thinned in my old planting beds where the rows were once 12 inches apart. It’s bit too much to pack them in like that. It’s not a telephone pole farm in the form of a red pine plantation. I was told by a fellow nut grower, the late John Gordon who was a great pioneer of the northern pecan, to leave only the most vigorous of pecan trees in the seed beds. He was emphatic about it like he discovered cold fusion. He said that these super fast growing plants are also the most productive, precocious from seed and early ripening. He was right. This type of advice is precious because who in their right mind would grow pecans in New York? Oh wait. Me in Michigan. We must be related.

Enjoy.

Kenneth Asmus

Pecans in Michigan
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Sprouts Hiding in The Grassy Meadow

Posted on January 23, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

The Grassy Meadows Have Delicious Food

The seed tells a story of a plant. If you’re willing to listen, you will benefit from your experience with the plant. Such was the case for some of the plants I grew at my farm that by seed were considered challenging.  Phragmites was one. Remarkable and a powerful perennial grass, Phragmites can do it all. It is a well-known as a plant silt stopper in the wetlands of North America as well as a circumpolar plant found throughout northern Europe and China. It is growing in places where few other plants can tread. Once it’s job is done, it quietly fades into the background.  Even the cattails can’t do it like phragmites which often grow right next to it.

Could you grow the Phragmites like the picture of my farm pond above as you would any other crop plant and harvest its sprouts and high sugar leaves? Could this be replicated in dry soils?

 It was only natural that I try growing it to test its adaptability in non-wetland conditions. I was quite fond of the sprouts of phragmites flavor.  In the spring, I would pluck a few and nibble my way around the pond. In many ways they were like mini-bamboo sprouts found near the base of the canes. I have several edible wild books touting Phragmites as a delicious edible plant found widely in North America. Like another wetland species, River cane bamboo, the sprouts are completely delicious, crispy and worth harvesting.  The first place I took the roots home was my home garden. I told no one because people have strong negative reactions to any stoloniferous grass that can skip on the surface of a pond twenty feet in a year. I hid in my grassy meadow of ideas with my eat-the-sprouts philosophy. I did have company. I joined the muskrats. They had figured this out and were not bashful in decimating the populations every now and then. The bluegill and frog populations exploded after Phragmites and cattails first appearances at the pond. The high sugar content of the leaves brought in colonies of aphids which also fed other insects willing to dine on their sugary excretions. I carefully plucked out several roots from my family’s farm pond and put them in my garden. It took less than a month and they died quietly. My next attempt was from seed. I gathered a grocery bag full and layered them in a propagation tray. Six seedlings came up out of several hundred thousand seeds. Obviously, the Phragmites plant does not need the seeds too much to continue its existence. Because of their rarity, once the seedlings were grown, I plunked them carefully into a sandy dry hillside next to the river cane bamboo. It too is found in wetland conditions but will grow perfectly fine in dry conditions.  This time it took a little more than a month to die out. My perennial sprout farm and grassy meadow dream filled with phragmites was a no go and fading fast.

River Cane Bamboo from North America grown at my farm. Along with it’s seeds, it could be both a sprout and grain plant given the right attention to selections and understanding its value as a crop plant.

 Not to give up entirely, I moved on with cattails. Cattails have sprouts that are wonderful fresh. Pure white and crispy is the cattail sprout. This time I found a cattail colony on a steep bank off a major highway intersection in Michigan. It was just plain weird this colony was growing over 40 feet uphill from the native soils below.  I pulled over and picked a grocery bag full of heads and drove off. As people stared at me driving by, I repeated, “Nothing here. Move along now.”  Many of the seeds blew around in my cab as I drove away. Like a snowstorm of seeds, I had accidentally left the passenger’s side window open which left me fully engulfed with the fluffy seeds as I headed north on I-69.  I eventually took them to my farm and put them in a propagation tray of which nothing came up. Luckily, it rained and I had left that same window open in my truck. The seeds that stuck to my carpet on the floorboard sprouted. It wasn’t like the blow molded alfalfa sprout package density but a few here and there. This too failed and it was obvious that growing a good cattail root for eating would take only wetland conditions. For the record, the F-150 floorboard is not conducive to cattails.

I still have this idea and cannot shake it. If you were farming your meadow of sprouts, it would not make sense to convert a wetland to your perennial green idea. The same is true with running irrigation in non-wetland conditions to make the whole system work. This is not a crop like cranberries so well known in modern agriculture. Few will care about your love of sprouts. The Phragmites for all intents and purposes is the running bamboo. I tried a sterile Miscanthus for a while. It was a good landscape plant growing in my dry soils but the flavor and toughness was not good. There are many hydrologically damaged ecosystems done entirely by humans that could be used for species like cattails and phragmites. But since the actual crop yield and desirability is in question you need a representative planting where that could be measured and tested that same way you would grow a new tree crop. The same questions apply and yields could be done by selecting seedling characteristics which show a greater propensity for dense sprouting along the long stoloniferous roots. I have seen this characteristic on all plants while digging thousands of plants by hand over the last 40 plus years. Even the potato has it. This type of selection would be a highly dense sprouting plant with more of a clumpy nature with dense sprouting just like asparagus varieties. It is no different only you harvest the plants before the cholorophyll gets a chance to fill in. It is also possible it could be grown in darkness in the spring to allow the sprouts to develop to larger sizes the same way asparagus is done. The vigor of the species is most evident in the spring as the water temperature heats up.

I once tried to talk to a company about installing certain woody plants in a wetland area that was a superfund site. I was planning on donating the plants as I had many extra Michigan holly plants. I thought we could bring over some employees from my farm to help too. Win-win. I had the thought, I will just knock on the door and show up with my great idea. The company that got this massive contract had this trailer parked out front with people working in it. It was near the Kalamazoo River. After the second time, I noticed that the office in back would get mysteriously quiet when I walked in. The office manager wanted me out of there and said please do not come back in a very nice way. Before I left, I tried to share with her some of my ideas, thinking certainly she is interested. She said, “Please do not come back.”  She was very nice. People don’t want to hear new ideas because the old ones are already bought and paid for. You can’t interfere with that.  Today there is grass and nothing but grass and this grass is mowed ever now and then. Of course, it looks very nice.

Swamp Rose hanging with the cattails and phragmites.

The story of a grassy meadow sprout farm is within us. That is where the meadows can start and flourish without the noise and misinformation from the outside world. Phragmites and cattails help create the grassy meadow. In this meadow, you could grow sprouts and eat them like many have done for thousands of years. Maybe we can hide there with the muskrats and bluegills for a while and enjoy the flavors. The laws of nature in the grassy meadow allow it. Here you can uncover and quietly enjoy the delicious nature of the world. But let’s keep that a secret for now. The sprout farm will have to wait.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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ZEA

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

ZEA

Zea is the genus name for corn. It is the Greek word meaning bread. The first Zea grain goes back to at least 12,000 years ago. Evidence was recently found in a cave in Turkey that Zea grains were cultivated from wild plants in the region.  Zea highlights the power of an ancient grain shared cross culturally as a staple food filled with health giving properties much like corn is today. Farro is closely related to Zea. Occasionally I will buy the whole grain farro at the health food store and make a porridge out of it for lunch at my farm. Alexander the Great consumed it. The ancient Egyptians preferred it. Kenny the farmer from Michigan ate it. It is the ‘life giving’ grain mentioned in the Illiad.  I began wondering if corn had a similar origin as a grain which also contained life giving properties. For me the northern highland teosinte was the North American Zea. It too was untended and found growing in the rocks and cracks of a high elevation mountain desert. It too was shared cross culturally as a form of popcorn and made into porridge. This was the Zea I was looking for.  Here is what I found.

Plate one; Zea mays var. mexicana selections

Plate two; Zea mays var. mexicana x pop and sweet corn

Plate three; Zea mays var. mexicana x pop corn mixtures

Plate four: Zea mays var. mexicana x heirloom purple sweet corn

Plate five: We’re going to need a smaller sheller. Not adapted to modern or even a quasi-primitive hand held corn technology. Is Zea a grain without a means to make it useful on a broader scale?

My experiences:

  • dwarf annual grass
  • 30 day corn
  • dark purple pigmentation in foliage and kernels
  • popcorn from an ancient grain
  • diverse progeny in an open pollinated population
  • low water-xerophyte of a common food plant
  • Nutrient and Mineral Dense Grain
  • self-seeding
  • freedom of expression-you cannot stop it
  • continuation of wild corn without boundaries
  • new evolutionary and ecological trajectories for ZEA.
  • lunch
Teosinte corn bread made with 25 percent Ashworth sweet corn flour. Ground in an old Vitamix blender. Like grinding buckshot, the kernels were incredibly hard and heated up the metal top quickly. The sound could be heard for miles! I wore protective eye and ear gear. The flavor was mineral like with a strong corny flavor. Betty Crocker recipe.

Enjoy,

Kenneth Asmus

NEOSINTE-TEOSINTE SEEDS AVAILABLE

Available only within the U.S.A. Supporting my seed sales helps me continue my search for Zea. Thank you.

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The Year of the Buffalo Gourd

Posted on December 20, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment

Of the many crop plants that I grew for my retail nursery, the buffalo gourd was one of the most fascinating. Frequently I searched for perennial versions of common annual food plants like squash. The buffalo gourd fell into this gourd-squash arena as a perennial plant. It was not cultivated and I think I was one of the first few nurseries to produce and sell the plants. It was a remarkable vine with super clean tidy foliage completely immune to animal and insect predation. What I didn’t know was that this crop plant was not a food plant as is. Like many gourds it was said to contain high amounts of alkaloids along with bitter compounds and saponins deep within the seeds and flesh. At the time, I quickly put the plant in my nursery catalog category as “Cover Plants.” The buffalo gourd fulfills the green cover aspect of a fast growing perennial vine with large tuberous roots and the ability to grow in hot climates, dry soils and uncultivated environments. It was the coolest looking vine that I had ever grown. Even the flowers were amazing and very showy. The smell from the foliage was pungent and difficult to work around. Just brushing up against the leaves sent out the message of stay away please.

I had first read about buffalo gourd in one of my Michigan botany books being found not too long ago near a railroad line 40 miles from my farm. It was thought of as a kind of botanical fluke in many ways as it seemed so out of place that many thought it was brought there by the early Native Americans to the region. In southwestern Michigan, we have remnant prairies in many places. I was fortunate to visit some of these locations with an ecology professor in my class of “Ecology of Southwestern Michigan” taught at Western Michigan University by Dr Richard Brewer. I began to wonder if I could grow it and see how it performed as a perennial squash. It was Eric Toensmeir’s first seed company that came to the rescue along with the great J.L. Hudson Seedsman. (Originally a Michigan seed company) I tried to coax a customer in Oklahoma to send me a box of buffalo gourds she had found along a creek bank and creek bottoms on her property. She said it looked like a field of golfballs in the fall. This type of location is typical for buffalo gourd where ticks, poinsonous snakes and in ground bees make a living. They don’t care how much you were paid to harvest gourds either. Cash doesn’t give you special access. She said no thank you. I fully understood. Her teenage son refused as well. But wow, a field of golf balls? I told another Oklahoma customer of mine I wanted to vacation in Oklahoma to collect gourds. I suggested the state promote gourd hunting. It doesn’t run away and no one will eat it. But it does make a nice rattle after drying.

I began propagation and put as many of the plants near my barn on a slope of a hill with mulch mats around them. There they grew for about a decade. The moisture levels in the soil during winter and the cold hardiness was an issue. The last few plants finally grew large enough to fruit. Only two fruits were produced and finally the planting died out entirely. When it came to actually taste testing the fruit and seeds and you get past the fetid smell of the foliage, it is not possible to eat. It is extremely bitter and rich in saponins. That soapy feeling lingers. Just putting my tongue on the cut fruit took a good five minutes to recover despite several rinsings. My employees noticed me hung over the sink with the water running full blast. The seeds once dried are equally as bad. I never had enough to roast or boil for further tests. I was kind of thankful for that. If you were to go to the Wikipedia page of Buffalo Gourd you will see the word ‘edible’ over and over again. You will read how the fruit is eaten by humans and animals without blinking an eye. Why is there such a discrepancy between my experience and the reader guided writings of Wikipedia?

I have several theories. Direct experience is left out entirely. Not mentioned is the specifics in processing the seed for oil, feed or the cultural ties of the native Americans and how or if they processed them for food or medicine or both. Many vendors of the seeds say point blank it is a poisonous fruit and seed and should not be eaten. There is a little wiggle room according to some in that the immature fruits can be eaten yet you do not see this in the literature of historical use. My green gourds never ripenened fully in Michigan and did not turn yellow. I did not roast or boil the seeds and process them in some way to make them palatable. I had a small seed source from one plant which is a very small of sample. Maybe I am missing the bigger picture. You do see the reaseach on biofuels, root harvest and potential for its edible oil but without any whisper of what the heck are those bitter alkaloids and saponins doing in there and how to remove them easily?! Thank goodness for YouTube were only direct experience will do. Both a forager and a permaculturist in their attempts to make it edible say “Nothing to eat. Move along. You could get sick and die too.” If you take a look at Moerman’s “Native American Ethnobotany” there are many important uses for it’s medicinal properties by many tribes in North America. There are very few mentions for its food value of which one is listed under unspecified. The resources needed to make buffalo gourd safe to eat would have taken considerable time and energy to prepare is one reason. The other is there were already the edible squashes and pumpkins in North America which were already completely free of compounds damaging to the human physiology and they tasted delicious. Flavor makes it happen.

Not to give up entirely, I purchased both seeds and plants from as many vendors as I could find this fall. In the range of a widely distributed plant like the buffalo gourd, the first thing you will notice there is a lot of other gourds called buffalo gourd. And those labeled with scientific nomenclature also show quite a bit of variation whether it is in southern California or Texas. The plant is also found in Ohio. There is likely some misidentified plants too. Botanists tend to dislike that but to me it is another discovery. I don’t care if its misidentified. I kind like that someone found something and they too do not know what it is. The reason for this is the buffalo gourd is a complex hybrid of two or three plants and stabilized on its own due to isolation over time. If you bring some of those other plants in its vicinity again, then the hybrids will spontaneously form again. To me this shows that the variations could easily produce a pumpkin or winter squash. It is just you don’t want to be the first person to make a pie out of it and feed your family. Scientific testing would play a strong role in the perennial pumpkin idea to make sure it is not toxic or damaging in any way. Another aspect of it should be noted: is this really of value? How can this benefit people including farmers that grow it? Or is it locked into your private breeding dream rich in fantasies with little effect ?

The buffalo gourd represents the dynamic nature of plants and their ability to change over time. It contains within it the seeds of a delicious edible squash and oil crop. That edible crop plant today is not fully expressed in terms of its outward population and in terms of human applications. It is medicine for the environment but it is not food. You could create a new crop from it as a perennial pumpkin or squash as food. You never know what you will find until you cultivate the plant and experience its natural tendencies. Once a long time ago at my farm I successfully hybridized a wild form of pumpkin by accidentally crossing two very distinct species, one of which was poisonous. The results were amazing. A single vine grew over an half an acre in size tapping down on each node an immense root system. The result was a completely seedless squash. The fruit had a nice aroma. It had a slight bitterness to it. No seeds were formed out of a whole bushel of fruit. I found that very fascinating, Eureka! I had found hollow pumpkins with no way to replicate it. It highlights the power of plants moving in unseen directions. They are following a trajectory of least resistance and maximum effect. This in turn connects you to the buffalo gourd with the goal of a perennial pumpkin and squash. I truly believe I saw the beginning of a one plant per acre pumpkin capable of reproducing itself from its perennial roots tapping into the rich soils and subsoils so critical for human health.

2026 is the year of the Buffalo Gourd. We will grow deep, spread far and be fruitful. Like all plants, the buffalo gourd improves everything it touches. I will try to follow its path and do the same. Join me.

Cucurbita foetidissima  Michigan Oikos Tree Crops Farm

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Diversity Discovered: The Wild Gourd https://biologicalenrich.blog/2024/11/09/diversity-discovered-the-wild-gourd/
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Persimmon Ideals and Species Fruits

Posted on November 10, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
Start with the seed.

The wild Missouri black gooseberry was a plant I discovered under the powerlines near my farm when I first started my nursery. I reproduced it from seeds and found unique high yielding individuals in the populations. This was one way to not transmit virus and rust by always starting disease free with the seed. Usually Ribes are produced by cuttings. It was easy to grow and spread to other places on my farm. Under cultivation this species fruit excelled with high yields and delicious fruit on a long lived rather thorny plant. This is the Power of the species fruits free of breeding.

My farm is dedicated to creating small collections of species of fruits. Whether they came from the wild or a cultivated collection, they were of great interest and value to me. Species fruits can be more than just something to breed and create varieties from. The species can be used as it exists in nature with no selection whatsoever eliminating the need for clonal reproduction. This can provide a means to spread and reproduce via animals which in turn ecologically enrich your land. Each successive generation becomes more adapted than its previous incarnation. The plant is essentially ‘gaining knowledge’ and broadening its genetic base with increasing complexity as time goes on.  This can be the part where a human can play a role to help shape and form the plants in an edible world of unique culinary possibilities. This is the tree crop agroforestry model of a food rich landscape redefined. Here is the breakdown on much of what occurs at my farm. It falls under the banner of ecological regeneration and crop development as one force of nature. It includes all the world’s food plants and was a key into the world of the Diospyros genus.

It begins with the seed and a vector of transportation.

Birds do it all. From eating fruit to gaining health and then deposting the seeds with a bit of fertilizer I soon began seeing the benefits of the flocks of cedar waxwings at my farm. Gray squirrels were particularly good at expanding my shellbark hickory plantings. White footed mice hoard plum seeds away from the original plantings. Some are not consumed. Blue jays drop pecan nuts and they get covered in leaf litter. The whitetailed deer step on the seeds and bury them in mulch as they graze and fertilize their way across your land.

Plants begin to grow in increasing complexity as a community of opposite values.

Scarification occurring within of the birds intestinal track along with the cold and warm dormancies allow the plant to grow in its location. Think of mulberry. Mulberry trees are said to be all bird planted. Nuts and plum seeds go through dormancy sprouting a long tap root in the spring. Some seedlings fade with time. Others are protected by multiflora roses and honeysuckle which make a mini-nursery in their understory. This is the new community replacing my pasture.

The plants begin to fruit even in the shade of other trees and the rather compressed foliage making best of what light is available. More ‘vectors’ move in to fulfill the transition to forest.

The tree creates more fruit to be further assisted by future generations of birds and mammals. Humans also may take an interest in making something delicious from it. They begin to care for it in some small way to make it more productive while creating new culinary possibilities. This is the new orchard scenario where humans gain strength and health as a by product of random plants in unusual locations. The apple will fruit in the shade of an oak tree. The species is not an orchard usually but could be used that way. It has far more flexibility than the clonal fruits we know. During pruning in the winter, I leave specific seedling trees and prune them skyward and cut to the ground other shrubs to enhance their fruiting capabilities.

This wild apple was grown from seed from a gratted tree called ‘Hewes’. Hewes is a larger form of crabapple called Virginia crab and used specifically for cider. By selecting for healthy foliage and stronger growth, I was able to find heavier bearing fruiting trees with smaller fruit free of insects and diseases. The flavor was changed dramtically making fresh eating difficult. Too much tartness yet perfect for cider and syrup.
A wild form of pear found in Florida represents an Asian pear species where small fruit size along with astrigency and tartness create the perfect crabpear not possible to eat fresh yet used today to make the Florida Pie Pear. Once the fruit blets the astringency diminishes and fruit can be used as a pulp rich in high density pear fruit flavor. Pretty much the opposite of the pears we eat today. This is a species fruit able to create flavors without being in an orchard system with extremely small inputs to maintain it.

Biological novelty is the key to successful species fruit cultivation.

PERSIMMON IDEALS

I followed these same ideals with the persimmon genus. The persimmon genus has 500 plus species of tropical and evergreen trees and shrubs. There is a dozen hardy persimmon species but only one of commercial significance. I wondered why there was such a low number. Seeds of the other species outside of the American species virginiana were difficult to obtain.

My line up seedling species persimmons included:

Diospyros kaki, Diospyros kaki var. silvestris, Diospyros oleifera, Diospyros cathayensis, Diospyros duclouxii, Diospyros lotus, Diospyros texana, Diospyros rhombifolia 

Diospyros rhombifolia
Diospyros rhombifolia


The seedlings of the above species were planted in my field in carefully tended spacings. Today only the Diamond-leaf or Princess persimmon, Diospyros rhombifolia exists. It is considered a zone 6-7ish plant but likely it can make a zone 5 once established. For years the plants grew slowly. Today they take up a small but growing row of stoloniferous shrubs up to two foot tall. No fruit yet but it does look like a few flower buds exist. I end up visiting the Trees and Shrubs Online every now and then to see what the fruiting possibilities may look like in the future. It gives me inspiration with the Princess persimmon. It is interesting that this species is thicket forming like the American plum. This species is rather new to North America and there are very few locations that have fruiting individuals. This species could be used as a persimmon berry.

Only a new seed will bring a new crop. It will not be clonal in nature until a new species fruit comes forward in unexpected directions of ecological proportions. It is from there a cultivated fruit can emerge. From that point, it can be a self sustaining wild population increasing in diversity and complexity. It will be shaped by the laws of nature of climate, plants and the animals surrounding its new and ever expanding domain wherever we decide to take it.

Enjoy.

Kenneth Asmus

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Persimmon Roots and Their Underground Network

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Biologicalenrichment
‘Magnifico’ American Persimmon, on the top of a steep sandy slope.

In the beginning, I had a pasture. It was a good pasture used for hay to feed livestock. It consisted of steep hills with flat parts which was almost barren of trees. All I had to do was add trees. I had twelve trees of black cherry, green ash and black oak on thirteen acres. As time went on and I continued my sneak-it-in-when-I-had-time plantings, I soon found myself surrounded by trees and fruits of all types from many different continents. I would like to think that I had expansive knowledge of what I was doing while creating an affect I was fully aware of. In reality, it was far more complex than I thought it would be and my rather carefree attitude was a good state of mind. When I continued one of my apricot plantings on the farm’s steepest slope, I noticed walnut roots over 50 feet away from the parent tree dipping into the mulch resevoirs around the trees. One very vigorous hybrid black and english walnut tree seemed particularly good at finding these mulch and fertilizer repositories.This would in turn increase the walnut root mass around the apricot trees I was planting. You would see lots of root hairs in these areas with a main structural root intersecting the mulch. When I would cut them off and plant new apricots in this area, it was only a matter of time that both walnut roots and as well as nearby persimmon roots would encase the downward slope of this area. Eventually the apricot trees took hold and grew around the other roots tapping into the sand and rock filled soil. In the middle of the farm over two hundred feet away, I began finding the jet black roots of American persimmon. My farm was being encased by persimmon roots. This network took only 25 years. I am pretty sure my farm is now the root highway of cosmic proportions. You just don’t see it unless you dig a hole and notice the jet black roots.

Today when I dig, there is woody plant roots everywhere. I still have the wild asparagus, orchard grass and alfalfa roots but now there is a larger community of plants spreading out in all directions. The roots of these trees and shrubs have transformed the vegetation to the point, I am now discovering many new species of plants never seen before on my farm and a few not found in Michigan. This type of biodiversity is a mixture of native and non-native plants each benefiting the other. Without one, the other would not be there. I could not do a better job. You can ‘set the stage’ of ecology but the ‘actors’ come on their own. Their performance will only add to the next layer to arrive in successive order far greater than you anticipated. Ecological integration is the key to biodiversity. The American persimmon is a good example. Once established it brings in a huge array of animals all searching primarily for its sugary treat. Here come the squirrels, chipmunks, birds, deer, skunks, racoons, neighbors pig, coyotes, cats, groundhogs, weasel and garter snakes. Everyone is welcome in the shade of the persimmon. It can only give. It’s only natural that other plants want to live in it’s shade.

Amur honeysuckle under the American persimmon. This species is pruned to the ground every now and then which then adds to the organic matter in my soil while feeding the deer with a high protein browse as it resprouts in the summer. This is my fertilizer for the persimmons. Amur feeds American. American feeds Amur with its leaf litter.

Magnifico American Persimmon

One of the methods I use for selecting seedling trees is to look at the leaf of a plant. For American persimmons, I would choose seedling plants with large leaves that remained free of any foliar diseases. One seed source good at generating this type of tree was the Pipher tree in Illinois. (A special thanks to Ralph Krieder, Jr. for collecting and selling them to me for many years.) Magnifco was from this seed source. The large fruits start dropping in mid-October and are down by the first week in November. The fruits are clean and firm when fully ripe and free of astringency. It has a nice mild flavor and is of course sweet. It averages 5-6 seeds per fruit. The fruit is produced in great abundance and drops when leaf fall occurs. A few fruit will remain in the tree in November.

Pipher seedling taken at my farm. Good production is expected from this seed source. It was also a very winter hardy selection with zero seedlings dying to winter damage compared to Missouri seed sources.

Persimmons rarely self seed. Once the fruit falls, it begins fermenting. Unlike apples or pears there is no cellulose outer casing to protect it against alcohol and excessive moisture and soon the alcohol passes through the seed coat and the embryo is destroyed. Seeds consumed by deer seem to pass through their digestive tract and those too are destroyed. The only ‘natural’ seed dispersal may be by squirrels moving the fruit and partially eating them and deer stepping on the fruit crushing and smashing it in the ground removing a few seeds outside of its pulpy enclosure. One way to random plant of kindness would be to throw the crushed fruit into leaf litter. The seed itself is not eaten by most mammals making it an ideal plant to direct seed. Just cover the fruit with 1/2 inch of soil in the fall. Specific individual plants seem to have a greater propensity to spread by runners. This is more apparent on a hillside with thin topsoil or there is damage due to herbicide or loss of topsoil where the roots are exposed to light in some way.

The American persimmon seed without its coat.

Enjoy.

Kenneth Asmus

Imperial moth: Image from my farm in southwestern Michigan. Host plants include American Persimmon
Box turtles are common in this area filled with pear, persimmon and pawpaw. They often hibernate under the trees.You can find their exit holes in the spring if you’re lucky. My guess is they were led there by their noses and the smell of fruit as the location is rather isolated from other more conducive habitats. You can find their bite marks on the fruit once in a while. They may also eat the nearby plums in this area.

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