In Search Of

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Bixbyi-Regia Walnut-The Clearo Walnut

I average one day every week going over my collection of trees.  If you were to see me do this, it appears I am wandering around lost and looking for something. I am.  I am evaluating the structure of the plantings I did over time and the natural seed-ins and die outs.  What I am finding is that my tree crop farm has become more than a random collection of trees. I like the word arboretum, but technically they are designed differently compared to a tree crop farm.  Of course, they are inspiring, but they are not particularly dynamic in an agricultural sense. In terms of commerce and the value of trees or plants to increase land value, arboretums may have some components but are woefully short as repositories of food plants. Tree crop farms are heavy in plant research and development but lack a gift shop.  A tree crop farm can inspire.  It also produces a ‘product’ (seeds) that allows people to replicate a portion of your farm somewhere else. Without replication, and using your existing ‘data-trees’ on the land, the farm ceases to be. It has both an objective and subjective value. For me I was very thankful that I did not use grafted trees.  It was the seedlings that propelled both the selection process forward but also a means of using plants without clones.  The tree crop farm is not an orchard or a native plant kingdom either. Those are components as well. Management wise you would never focus or remove invasive or weedy species. Huge waste of time and resources.  I know from personal experience.  And you would never plant grafted fruit trees in high numbers as it is far too costly and not effective in the long term. This too I know from personal experience. But certainly, you will find yourself pruning, clearing and even grafting here and there to help with the tree structure of the farm and testing new plants and ideas. Creativity on the farm comes from within. From personal experience you are the expert and as a farmer it is your ideas that take fruit.

During the day, I also search for the numbered aluminum metal tags left out in the field when I first grew my plants and put them throughout my 13 acres. They correspond to my Index. I rake and prune around the trees and christen them with new tags if they don’t already have one.  At night, I quietly change and correct the Index Seminum which is on an excel spreadsheet originally taken from paper notepads, tablets and ring binders.  My daughters helped write the species and names of plants when they were in grade school. Later as the nursery grew, I had an office manager crank out the first excel spread sheet. Today that spreadsheet highlights the plants I have at my farm and their seed sources and backgrounds. This winter I plan to add the tree height using a hypsometer along with caliper size using one of those forestry tapes. Today the metal detector helps find those precious old aluminum forestry identification tags. I have not found any gold bars yet but did find an old logging chain. It’s a sign from below I am on the right path.

At one time I had over 1000 different species and selections on the farm all tagged.  About 25 percent of the species died, most of which were perennials. There were some odd things I found. Mylar birthday balloons appear never to break down. Pie tins to hold candles from the do it yourself mini-hot air ballons confused me for a while. Lucky it didn’t cause a fire. For a moment, I was thinking fruit pies were dropping from the sky. Some tags were stolen or intentionally moved by someone for whatever reason. I recently purchased another 1000 tags to label the natural seedlings and new plants that I add. It is rewarding for me to revisit my old tree friends and see what sort of changes have occurred. They are all growing well. A few trees who are fading are going to the mill to be made into lumber for tables and other wood art. I am focusing on the oldest and largest trees including the seed bed trees which have the highest in tree density.  Many of these trees represent the structural beams of my forest and were left to grow because of something I saw in them.  The seed bed trees were seeded in four foot wide planting beds I created for growing trees for the mail order businesses I was selling to. While on my search and find mission, I noticed the walnuts this week. They have really packed on the caliper in their mid-sections.  Here are a few recent discoveries as they often take unique trajectories of diversity far outside what I expected. The walnuts reflect this diversity.

Juglans x intermedia

BroadView- Intermediate Progeny

There is a Russian English walnut called Broadview well known in Michigan. It has huge nuts and can easily take minus 20F. I found a source not far from my home that had mature trees managed by someone who knew exactly how to keep the husk maggots, curculio and codling moths from damaging the crop. These same pests on the black walnuts do very little damage. I purchased twenty pounds of nuts and grew seedlings from Broadview. In one year, I found a distinctive hybrid of black walnut in the batch called “intermedia”.You could see the leaf difference and the hybrid vigor. It was nearly twice the size of other seedlings in the first year alone. This cross is very rare only because the overlap of pollination rarely happens. There is a good 20 to 30 day gap and it takes a special spring of cool weather to produce the crossing ala naturelle. I planted the tree in its permanent spot in the late 80’s at the base of a hill at my farm. Today that tree is immense and has a huge wide spreading 60-foot crown and counting. For whatever reason, the nut yield is tiny rarely producing more than 20 nuts. However, those few nuts have produced some amazing fast-growing seedlings which also now grace my farm. The nuts have odd shapes and are impossible to crack. Once a research scientist who was working on walnuts visited the farm looking for additional germplasm.  When he saw the Intermedia Broadview he said nothing. He looked horrified. I asked him twice what he thought anyways and finally got a response. He shook his head. “That I don’t want” he said. You see it had too many branches. It was not what he was breeding. He wanted a pole not a giant crown.

I felt it was a missed opportunity. Not only is the mass of the tree triple that of other walnuts planted at the same time, it also had a secret superpower: oxygen.  Vision alone is not enough. You could objectively measure it using sophisticated sensors or subjectively just sit under the tree and close your eyes for a few minutes and see if there is some effect. A previous research scientist studying shade trees found black walnuts to have the highest per square foot canopy production of oxygen compared to other trees. It is thought to be partially due to the large compound leaves. Find a walnut with massive branching and large robust leaves and you have found the greatest air purifier. My Biggy walnut is not intermediate in purifying the air. All these characteristics of fast growth, wide spreading branches and large caliper are related and give a glimpse into the value of a nut tree without the nuts. The wood of the hybrids is even more spectacular than the species in many ways because it too is intermediate and rare to find. They provide a unique middle ground of color and grain of black and English walnuts as pictured below from a branch sample.

Claro Meets Clearo : How’s it going? It’s been a while.

For many years I was producing the buartnut for the retail giants. It was not a formal contract. If you had 1000 trees, they would buy them all. The giants were moody. They would drop you like no tomorrow if they found a cheaper source or if the product did not sell.  This occasionally left me with thousands of buartnuts.  The buartnut is a natural cross of the Japanese walnut and butternut. It is a good cross because the seedlings are often immune to butternut canker and live twice as long as butternut normally does. I found a tree that was nearly 4-foot diameter and it made great seedlings. One year I collected over over 25 bushels of nuts from this one tree. Lucky for me and my relationship with the finicky retailers, it was in the abandoned seed beds of the second and third year plants that I could see the various crosses of all the walnuts very easily. This led to what I named the Clearo walnut, a natural cross with English walnut and the buartnut. The trees were easy to limb up producing all clear straight wood with no knots. Hybridization of walnuts really got its start with Luther Burbank using the English walnut and the California walnut called the Claro walnut. He christened his hybrid the Royal walnut and found very interesting progeny from its wake of diverse seedlings.

The Clearo Walnut- Strong structural growth and no nuts ever on this seedling.

This discovery propelled the English walnut into a commercial industry in California and made it possible to use the power of the Royal for grafting English walnuts onto. The accidental crosses of buartnut with the English and black walnut in my seed beds were not commonplace, averaging around 5 trees per 1000 seedlings. There was a couple of nearby English walnuts which made this possible with the overlapping of pollination. The leaves were easy to spot and looked like an English walnut leaf.  I tagged and moved many of them out to permanent spots on my farm. They rarely produce nuts, but their clean growth, large trunks and vigor make me wish I could of created a farm just with just hybrid walnuts.  I tried to produce the Burbank Claro Royals at my farm several times and had mixed results. I even purchased the original seed crosses from California to try. These natural hybrids reflect the environment they grew up in. Claro needed a drier, warmer climate. Clearo provides an avenue to continue the crosses for the use of walnuts in a cold climate. The application as a street tree, lumber producer and even a potential nut tree into the future is well within reach.

Claro and Clearo were happy to meet after all these years. Each had a different road to travel to reach fulfillment in this world of moody giants, frightened scientists and human gardeners. They are the royals in the plant world.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

The walnut family left to right: Intermedia, Clearo, Intermedia, Bixbyi, EnglishButter

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Miracles of Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Smooshed Fruit: Blackhaw and Medlar

Posted on October 18, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Recently while talking to the power line vegetation control folks at my farm, one of them said to me, “It must be really satisfying to know you planted a forest.”  I was very fortunate to be at the right time and right place to make that happen. What often is overlooked is the value of the fruits I raise from the forest that need a steward in processing. It’s great there are growers that cultivate the lesser-known fruits, but who is going to use them today and make a concerted effort to bring them to a larger market. It is a very difficult row to hoe because there is no industry to support and nourish a growing industry. Although I do see a few growing organizations willing to invest time and money into these obscure and less cultivated fruits, the rate of conversion is glacially slow. You can grow all sorts of interesting plants, but nationwide the actual use of land devoted to such endeavors is very small. If it falls into the wildlife or conservation markets, then it is not for people. There are a lot of smooshed fruits like crabapple, crabpear and persimmon which take a turn from hard as nails to soft and squishy when fall hits. Fully ripe these fruits may look iffy to consume but with processing have amazing flavors not found in other fruits. Here are two you should consider.

Smooshed Fruit One: The Raisin Tree: Blackhaw Viburnum-Viburnum prunifolium

The search for a raisin on my farm begins with Viburnum not Vitis. I grew many of them including Manchurian, Korean, American and Canadian species. Many are used in traditional drinks and jellies. The issue was finding the right species and then eventually finding a seed strain from that species. Inspired by others who told me of large plants with dense heads of fruits on small trees, I began planting both Iowa and Michigan forms of Viburnum prunifolium. At that time there were no varieties found as cultivars. This is odd in that it is a highly patented genus with many selections in the landscape trade. I found a seed source listed as Rustyhaw viburnum, Viburnum rufidulum from an Iowa seed dealer. When it fruited, it had nearly double the amount of fruit to seed ratio. From Yee ol’ botanical books, it is not Rusty.  It is a close relative. All grew fine in the dry sandy soil on a wind-swept area on my farm. It took a minimum of 10 years to fruit from seed. The yields greatly increased with time. After twenty years, the plants begin to clone out via stolons which I used for nursery production. The most productive plants became trees with large trunks and widely spaced branches. This structure held the crop off the ground to obtain the maximum sunlight and air flow. This is ideal for ripening this particular crop which you want over ripe to harvest. That’s right: smooshed.

Blackhaw is not a great name for the fruit itself. A new name that highlights its raisin-like flavor would be ideal. People who I know that have cooked the fruit mention using cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg to turn it into a spread. The fruit lends itself to processing easily once the fruit changes from plump to the smooshed in-between zone to wrinkly and dry. The smooshed-in-between zone is the best time to harvest when the flavor is at its peak.

Seed sources play a role in understanding how nature adapts. For the fruit farmer, it means making selections that are easy to propagate, easy to fruit and of course have a value to make the whole orchard worth the time and energy put into it. The nursery industry often cranks out a lot of Nannyberry, Viburnum lentago seedlings which is a common wetland species,  It did not survive long enough to fruit at my farm and kept losing its leaves due to a foliar disease during the summer.

GERMINATING THE SEEDS OF BLACKHAW VIBURNUM

Like all Viburnums, this requires double dormancy. Fall plant after cleaning the fruit. Plant 1/2 inch deep. The seed tends to migrate to the surface of the soil so tamp firmly.  The roots develop in the fall of the second year. In the following spring, a top will emerge from the seed. Seeds can be consumed by rodents so using a screened tray is another option, leaving it outside in a protected area and letting nature do the dormancy. Lift the screen in the second spring to allow for the seedlings to develop their tops.

Smooshed Fruit Number Two: Medlar-Mespilus germanica

I could never understand the medlar fruit until I had the chance to taste a fully ripe fruit in November. To me it had all the flavors I love in one fruit. It was sweet, slightly sour with a mix of pear, raisin and apple in one mellow syrupy sauce like consistency. I had over a dozen varieties growing in a row next to my greenhouse. They had very beautiful large fruits. One variety called ‘Supermol’ was probably the best in terms of flavor. Yet none were as good as tasting as the small, fruited Walters trees which I grew from seed from a nearby nursery. This particular selection was perfect for the climate of Michigan. This was likely from central Europe but I could not be sure. Many of the varieties of medlars were selected in regions in high desert locations. They are grafted onto hawthorne rootstock. The graft union was not ideal and suckers arose constantly.  The grafted trees were shorter lived than the seedling trees I had and the ripening period needed the fruit to be brought indoors to finish. It was a little like winter pears in many respects. As I cycled through commercial seed sources from Russia and the varietals it soon became apparent that the Walters was immune to fireblight, didn’t require grafting and showed great vigor from seed to fruiting. I no longer needed to meddle with the medlar. I had found the right combination.

Medlar suffers from a name which is confusing. Products should emphasize the flavor of the fruit and not that it “looks like a horse’s anus” as the origin of the name suggests. The blossom end of the fruit creates this pattern. Medlar is not known as a fruit.  The food you make from it could lend itself to a good name emphasizing its sauciness as a flavor additive. To me it is like a dense form of apple sauce.

Medlar is adapted in far northern locations where short seasons are the norm. It can be used with apples and pears as a flavoring additive in sweeter fruits. Medlar does not require spray and has no insect or disease issues on the foliage or fruit. However, one year there was some rust damage on the fruit which caused them to abort early. The fire-blight issue was very common with the named varieties. The trees grow well on my dry sandy soils.

‘Beacon” medlar from the Walters seed source. All heavy fruiting and ripens in Michigan fully. Not grafted, medlars will form colonies over time spreading by underground roots very slowly outwards similar to some species of hawthornes.

I made one selection, naming it  ‘Beacon’. It was the highest yielding plant out of five trees growing on a sandy hilltop. Overtime medlar will clone from roots and you will find some spread by stolons. It can be produced by seed and I think this is the future of the plant in terms of its cultivation on a larger scale. The yields of the plants could likely be improved and it would only take a grow out of 1000 trees to find the best. Even from seed, the plants have a strong propensity to fruit heavy with uniform ripening.

GERMINATING MEDLAR SEEDS

Medlar seeds have an internal clock type of dormancy which requires a completion of the embryo’s growth along with an extremely hard dense seed coat which needs wearing down by soil bacteria to split the sutures. The dormancy requires a winter, spring-summer and winter again to sprout fully. The seed coat wears down from the bacterial action of the soil which then completes the splitting of the seeds. Peach seeds are like this. The young trees are tap rooted and can be kept in place for 2-3 years before digging and transplanting. It transplants very well starting at the third year.

From Seed:

Seeds will likely be the new source of many woody orchard plants in agroforestry systems. This will allow a certain flexibility in selection by defining a seed strain to a specific region. My discovery is but a small sample of what could be possible from seed. Not everything will be done via seed but many more will be discovered as we test new species and the seed strains they represent. What will matter most are the yields and end use of the fruit. Having it produced by seed reduces the cost dramatically and makes it possible to move the crop quickly into the hands of a farmer wishing to produce a smooshed fruit quickly. With seeds we can share this resource on a global stage to others in need of greater health and wellbeing on an environmental and individual levels.

Enjoy, Kenneth Asmus

Posted in Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Diversity Found | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Smooshed Fruit: Blackhaw and Medlar

Heading North on the Persimmon Highway

Posted on October 14, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Not much is known about the American persimmon in its northern reaches. The term northern has both a subjective and objective value to it. Objective is based on the chromosome count for the northern ‘race’ and degree hours above 50 F.  Subjective depends on the Indian summer weather, how cloudy it is and the genetic roulette of individual trees. How wide the brown band is on the wooly bear caterpillar may be an indicator too. There are no commercial orchards to test the varieties or seed strains in any northern area like Michigan. It is the astringent tannins that hide the potential food value. It is the heat of the growing season that changes the astringency and chemistry of the fruit which then breaks down those tannins. A few frosts help it along by ripening the fruit fully before it drops or shrivels on the tree and is ready to eat.  One moment your mouth is awry with much torment and the next is pure sweet bliss.  This is the challenge. It is not tree hardiness.

Despite the 50-50 mix of male or female trees, I grew a lot of persimmons all from seed. For the nursery industry hung up on female cultivars and seedless varieties, that might be considered blasphemy.  Yet my experience with the northern grafted cultivar trees was that they were not northern enough. I’m not saying they don’t exist. I just could not find them at the time. The trees were hardy but the season in southwestern Michigan was too short for these short season cultivars. The trees grew fine, but the fruit was inedible.  That full ripening period is directly related to warm fall weather and a long enough growing season to fulfill the promise of one of nature’s most delicious fruits high in sugar. Keep in mind I live in a region where Concord grapes are grown commercially and every now and then they don’t make the sugar levels needed for grape juice. The question then becomes how far north can you go on this highway and what sort of carnage are we seeing along the road to persimmon utopia?  I had to find out so I went to the seed to start over. It is the only way.

When you look at a range map of an indigenous North American plant like the American persimmon you will notice a smooth line of demarcation on the map.  Persimmon country is southern Indiana not southern Michigan. I began to wonder if satellite populations exist or if not, could they be created by using northern seed strains in bulk. I used varieties like Morris Burton, John Rick, Early Golden, Killen and Pipher. Each of these selections produced very nice seedlings which I overplanted as a single row surrounding my farm.  Before they had fruited, I was producing the trees by the thousands for the retail and wholesale trade to some degree. Those seed sources were the most northern I could find. I also got encouragement from a local forester who told me of several persimmon trees he found that appeared in places not thought of as human introductions. Then there was the giant persimmon tree on the campus of K-College labeled black gum. It all added to my mini-repository of persimmon ideas.

The dense overplanting was done to get an idea of vigor, tree health and yields. The goal was to create a seed strain not a varietal orchard. I created a living fence between my neighbors and my farm. I planted them four feet within my property line. Over the years the trees were neighborly damaged by horses, herbicide, accidental grass burning and an overzealous fruit farmer who went at the limbs with a chain saw. Most of my property was then fenced in to try to prevent negligence by my neighbors.  By and large the 1800 feet of line made it through the first decade with trees maturing in as little as seven years from seed. Initially I used sawdust and grape pulp from Welch’s juice processing to surround my trees. With my pickup truck and scoop shovel in hand, I mulched around every tree. The spacing runs between 5-10 feet apart. Today some blank spots exist which I am filling in with honeylocust trees. Very few animals browsed the seedlings out in my open fields. I was told the foliage was poisonous. As the plantings began fruiting, they also drew in people, most of which appreciated the wild nature of persimmon. A few people stole the fruit. They assumed I wouldn’t notice.  I used the fruit for seed production in the nursery and the fruits for tours of the farm.  I gave the fruits to some who wanted to experiment with it for wine, pastries and syrups. With the advent of wildlife cameras I noticed there was a huge volume of white-tailed deer coming in from the surrounding areas. They created a highway direct to my farm. This added further benefits.

The seed was the most valuable. To make the seed available to a wider audience, I had perfected the art of cleaning the seed to prevent fermentation and mold. I purchased a Dybvig seed cleaner. This required an almost full-time operator on some days when we were harvesting.  Apparently, some of the seed markets were created using fruit that was lying on the ground too long or dumped into tubs where sugar plus natural yeast on the skin equals alcohol. Alcohol equals dead embryos. This gave a germination rate of 10 percent. To top it off the subjective term Northern was not that northern in the seed department as well.  This created a need for high quality northern seed.  

Like it or not my specific seed strains fall into the camp of valuable things from nature but not as valuable as you might think category. Currently one southern wholesale price has them selling at $17.00 a pound.  This is roughly what I was paying back in the mid-80’s.  Like seeds of many wild crops, the overall national seed pricing for some species is naturally low. We used to scrape the persimmon seed and pulp mixture on hardware cloth and run it through a modified hand cranked food processor like the kind people use for tomato sauce. At that rate, minimum wage was not achieved. I decided not to sell the seeds during that time. After spending several thousand dollars on a real seed processor, minimum wage was still not achieved on a wholesale level , never mind the cost of maintaining the trees and the land they sit on. I still sell them by the pound but I am way out of the wholesale price range. A cost-of-living adjustment shows a 85 percent decrease since 1986.

The benefit of any horticultural crop whether it’s wheat or persimmons is the value it brings to the environment and the farmer who raises the crop.  For the American persimmon it is how far north you can go outside of its range and a way to measure that on a larger scale so others don’t have to go through financial and ecological hoops to make it happen. With a proper plant steward, the American persimmon leaves us with a sweet taste in our mouth. We know this taste.  It is the flavor of success after all.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

In the farmerless fields, the American persimmon represents both wood and fruit easily reproducible from seed and grafting.

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Miracles of Nature | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Hog Peanut: Subterranean Tuber Becomes Aerial Bean

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

While harvesting American hazelnuts on my farm near the electric line right of way, I discovered the hog peanut. I pulled up on the vine and found several larger than average tubers (dime sized)  connected on a string. I had never noticed this before. The vine had produced a few small beans (lentil sized)  in a pod wrapped around the top of the hazelnut bush which supported the crop. Here was a nitrogen fixing legume growing untended doing its thing while the hazel cranked out nuts. It was providing additional food resources while improving the soil.   As time went on in my nursery, I grew several seed strains of it including some seeds sent to me from a former employee from northern Michigan. My farming activities naturally increased the locations of this plant. Even the polyhouses had a few colonies in them. It snuck in there and grew very nice in our purposedly designed nitrogen deficient soils of the seedling cactus propagation area. From here I started harvesting large amounts of hog peanuts under the trays growing on top of the ground cloth. This accidental system was the first time I had enough of those precious tubers to create further repositories around the farm and make specific selections.

It was one of the plants that over time had a growing number of followers. Like all good plants, a few critics were sucked into my whirlpool of plant enthusiasm. For some it was too weedy and invasive. The letters were shredded. The emails were blocked and I went on my merry way with the Crispy Snack hog peanut and its marketing.  We made additional planting areas outside and in a new greenhouse. I also began growing them in spun polypropylene growbags with fencing. This way I could capture those twisty explosive pods before the seeds were ejected with great velocity.  I was in the hog peanut business baby!  I was flying around the world, renting jets, staying in five-star hotels and dining with celebrities.  Let’s face it. It’s the nursery business and that too was of small consequence with no fanfare. It did have a good following and eventually reached the heights of academia a teeny bit.  I can smile when I spot it in some out of place area where I did not plant it. It too has woven itself into the fabric of my tree crop farm.

Enjoy,

Kenneth Asmus

The underground peanut as a subterranean bean sees the light of day for the first time.
A heavy seed set is insured if the vines are grown in full sun and put on a trellis. This trellis is a four foot tall two foot diameter cone of one inch chicken wire. Pollination is done mostly by bumblebees.
A small tuberous crop, hog peanut is harvested in the fall starting in early October. It forms on long rhizomes that develop directly from the vine and from the roots that spread from last year’s peanut.
The small seeds are edible too and can be cooked like lentils. The pods produce 2-3 beans each and are very productive.

Once a seed repository is built up including varietal selections like Crispy Snack, seeds can be used for the production of the tubers. You can pelletize the seed for greater uniformity and inoculate it with appropriate nitrogen fixing bacteria. It is two crops in one. Edible seeds and edible tubers.

This variety Crispy Snack was found at my farm and stewarded for a decade before releasing as a variety. It has larger than average tubers and is high yielding in aerial beans. It is from Michigan germplasm and likely crossed with other nearby hog peanuts. The plant itself grows well in disturbed sites in sun or shade. Tubers produced in my oak plantings were lower yielding than part sun areas.

The texture is very smooth with a creamy light buttery flavor in its raw state. It is one of my most flavorable tuber crops in the raw state. I just wish I had more of them to harvest. They are frustrating in terms of their low yields however inoculating the seeds and tubers increases the seed yields. There are other individuals who have developed selections of them world wide that have focused on the tuber production. Some are quite large upwards to lima bean in size.

Left to right: Crispy Snack Hog Peanut seeds and pods, Lima bean hybrid, tepary bean (Dark Purple) hybrid, 1 dragon bean, 2 dragon bean and 1500 Year Old Cave Bean cross.

Crispy Snack hog peanut tubers like all new root crops will need a farmer willing to grow and steward the plant. It is a bean and a tuber. Cultivate and disseminate.

Posted in Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Diversity Found | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hog Peanut: Subterranean Tuber Becomes Aerial Bean

The Species Pear Balancing Act On the Move

Posted on October 3, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

If you were to take a peak into the secret life of pears, you will find treasures hidden in places that are not easily accesible. These are not “escaped” pears but subspecies that someone in the taxonomic botanical world has gone to the trouble to identify clearly, track down and catalog in a very precise manner. They may exist only on paper as a single line of text in a book impossible to find in print. Some grow high in the mountain valleys and some are hanging on cliffsides. Usually plant scientists in this realm think breeding material. For me, I think eating material. Can we use the fruit as it is without the whole hoopla of selection and refinement? Does it matter if it is small or crabby like an apple?

When I first started growing pear species, I did so for the sole reason of finding the greatest biodiversity of the Pyrus genus. There was really only two species represented and available. I was looking for fruiting pears with unique flavors and sizes within the commune of Pyrus communis, the pear of commerce we all know. Through both seed exchanges in many of my professional organizations and purchasing seeds from wholesale companies, the pear genus did not disappoint. The germplasm was easily accessible. I extracted seeds from grocery store fruits. I stopped on major highways to collect fruit. I knocked on doors. I went the extra mile to achieve my plantings of which I maintain to this day. I love the wood of pear. I love the fragrance of the blossoms and its ability to crank out huge volumes of clean bug and disease free fruit even in the worst years. And for those people who tell me they hate pears, I quietly wonder how many other people fall into this boat. Is it lost in their own tastes or just have not had a good pear in a form that is pleasant and enlightening to them? The pear offers some solutions to tree crops and agroforestry more than the apple. I’m knocking on doors. Here are a few openers in my Pyrus sales pitch.

Pyrus communis var balansae

I received seed from a few populations from a forester that sent me the seed and a print out from those journals used to catalog the subspecies. Balansae is thought to be the one of the origins of the pear we eat today. It is considered to be a dwarf and compact tree in the wild. Found in the mountains of France, the fruit is highly astringent and not possible to eat fresh off the tree. The red squirrels target this tree and its seeds which made it difficult to collect the seeds. The fruit has a strong aroma if fully ripe and soft. Yet, how could a human create or find an edible fruit from this complexity of tannin and astrigent flesh? It seems impossible to me. Several of these trees have died recently and I am replacing them with its seedlings.Within this group there was a four indestructible seedlings with dense branching. Like its parents, they too will be put into this same rock quarry soil. To plant anything here is more like mining and requires a pick ax. This spring I found a nice pudding stone the size of a volleyball here while planting hardy oranges. Like its rocky Alps homeland, this is ideal for this pear which shows the greatest promise to grow fruit in places not thought possible.

Balansae is balancing.

Pyrus communis var. balansae

The Wild European Pear Part Two

Pyrus communis var. pyraster : Wild European Pear

There are certain forms of wild pear that represent the wavy line of domestication. Pears represent the very earliest distribution of fruit by humans. Keep in mind this is a hard fruit that could be carried and stored for a period of time and eaten when few fruits were available. People wonder about the unknown human vector. In the U.K. this species goes way back from the early cultures that made their home on this island nation. Pyraster pears are related to the central European forms found wild today. This particular species was discovered as one of the earliest plants carried by humans across central Europe. Many of the wild trees are now woven into the modern pear varieties because they all carry with them their past forms since the beginning of time. It was how the plant moved across continents in the blink of an eye. It was healthy and delicious. Because of its discovery in several Neolithic sites it is called an archaeophyte. The pear became native carried by native peoples. Humans were the vector because it helped sustain human health. In the process, everything else that ate the pear and its seeds benefited as well. From an evolutionary stand point, that is a win-win.

My pyraster seed came from a wild tree that has the characteristic tall straight growth habit eventually forming a tree 60 feet tall or more. It grew well on my farm and produced huge volumes of fruit. It had some issues with fireblight and was reduced by one third of its height one hot summer year. But it bounced back and began cranking out fruit after a decade of healing and regrowth. The thick spurs hold a large crop high in the tree. Shaking is the only way to bring it down. The hard fruit has to sit to fully ripen to remove the tartness and astringency. It mellows with age. Mushy is the ideal state to eat this fruit. No wonder it was a cherished fruit.

Yello Yellow Mr. Kite

On my daily walking route, I always pay attention to the plants along the road and in people’s yards. It was a surprise to me to see a yellow trillium this spring in a forest of black oak and pignut hickory just 30 feet off the road. See below.

I never noticed it before because I rarely walk the route in the spring. I have grown this species once before at my farm. It was short lived. This form was different in leaf and flower. When I got home, I checked the book “Trilliums” written by Frederick and Roberta Case. As a teenager, I was fortunate to meet him at a botanical tour near Saginaw, Michigan, my hometown. This species is attributed to garden escapes.  They say the yellow trillium is a southern plant and is way outside its ‘natural’ range. I am not convinced totally about that only because I have never seen it in commerce much if at all. About two weeks ago, on my way to my tree farm a Mississippi Kite flew right over my truck crossing paths not far from I-94. It is a rare sighting I was told. About a decade ago, someone spotted the bird about a mile from my home. Birders from all over came to see it.  You see it’s an ‘accidental’ and it too is a southern species.  I’m rather cavalier about life imitating gardening or vice versa. It’s no big whoop to me if either decide to stay.  Their presence indicates they are now part of the native flora and fauna dipping their toes into this new pond of biodiversity I call home. The pear knows this. With or without the hands of humans, things are on the move.  I say welcome. There’s room for all.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus                            

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Species Pear Balancing Act On the Move

The Unstoppable Power of Bamboo

Posted on September 25, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
River Cane Plant and Seeds -North America’s Indigenous Running Bamboo

When I lived in town with my family, I had a jogging route part of which was on a brick road on a steep hill. On the corner was a beautifully landscaped home of many fruits and ornamentals including a nice clump of bamboo. At that time it was not a plant you normally see in southwestern Michigan. The bamboo provided privacy and sound buffering to the front and side yards. It easily grew up to the second story window. Just by luck, I met the owner when he visited my farm and agreed to give me a tour of his yard. The bamboo was contained within a small area yet provided a huge benefit to the house and occupants. He invited me over for meditation which was scheduled for four hours on a Sunday. This was a bit long for my family life but I thanked him profusely. Later I hired someone for my farm who rented a portion of the house and lived there. He said it was a wonderful shade from the plant all throughout the house especially when the wind blew. You could see the design patterns of the leaves dancing on the walls within the house. It was accompanied by the music of birds who perched within it. Decades later in another cosmic twist of fate, I happened to be at a nearby garden center when I overheard one of the employees talk about ‘killing the bamboo’ for a customer. I asked and soon found out the new owners of that same home were not fans of the bamboo. The employee told me bamboo was a dangerous invasive plant and very hard to get rid of. It required multiple applications of a specific herbicide to kill. This highlights the love-hate relationship people have with bamboo. One year the plant is loved and cherished as a glorious landscape plant filled with cosmic possibilities. On Sundays incense and four hour meditations are within its vicinity. Songs of birds flooded the streets. The next day it’s dangerous and a destroyer of all things good. Toxic chemicals are needed to kill it entirely. Today a little planting of coneflowers sits near the curb with a sprinkling of coreopsis marking the end of an era.

“Hello, my name is Bob and I love bamboo.” Over heard from a bamboo support group.

Early on in my nursery I thought of the bamboo as impossible to grow in my climate. Cold hardiness was a big issue. Plants were never seed produced and involved large equipment to dig and transplant due to the massive root systems. It was not cheap. I kept trying to purchase bulk roots but they were always low quality and died during the first winter. Eventually I purchased the indigenous North American River cane bamboo. It had a more secure Zone 5 hardiness. I noticed that even mentioning I was going to plant bamboo created quite a stir of emotions. I love personal experience, good, bad or indifferent and the bamboo didn’t disappoint. I kept my love of it secret and told few. I really didn’t want to argue about its merits or food value from the sprouts. I am not a person to argue. Take that up with customer service and I would hand the phone to my single office manager.

My main question to folks dishing out advice is “have you ever tried to grow the bamboo?” And if yes, “what kind was it?” The devil was in the details. Most people had only heard of its effects in odd sorts of ways and had no direct experience. Eventually I began the process of producing River cane in my nursery from roots. It was slow to harvest and I had to extract soil with the roots to make it work as well as root prune the plants the year before digging. I had two forms of it. The Massachusetts selection was very uniform in spreading which produced linear roots with evenly spaced canes. I grew it on a sandy hillside which is the opposite of its native haunt of river bottomland. The second selection I obtained was a form found in North America which had even greater cold hardiness and runner production. Both of these selections produced delicious small sprouts in the spring. I had to limit the sales to twenty plants per year to keep my planting from disappearing entirely. Bamboo was becoming popular again with new varieties entering the marketplace too. There was less guilt associated with the clumping bamboo varieties. There was also correct ways to install the plant like my friend who lived on the brick road.

The edible and timber bamboos mix.

As time went on in my nursery life, I soon found several opportunities to develop cold hardy selections of a couple of species using seed produced plants. The way to do this is quite simple. It is similar to taking any zone 6 or 7 woody plant seedling and finding hardier selections in zone 5. I would grow a few hundred seedlings in an open polyhouse and let winter take its toll. The remainder of the seedlings would then be planted outside as a source of genetically different bamboo. The way bamboo is produced today is the opposite of this. They are all rooted from clones whether it is the clumping forms or runner types. Bamboo also has its own 6 mil weed barrier to prevent the runners from running and moving into unwanted real estate. It’s a whole production system. Yet beyond the landscape it does have the power to transform and have great positive environmental benefits. It can be ‘safe to use as directed’ and still be be a great part of agroforestry. This is where I left off with my research.

The timber bamboo.

The seed of bamboo became available commercially and it was possible to obtain it here in the U.S. However, a law was put into place banning its import eventually reducing the available seed on the market. It was a tricky little grass to germinate but once started a white clean root pops out from the embryo. I focused on two species, timber canes——Vivax bamboo and Edible Sprouts—- Edulis bamboo. There was quite a bit of loss during one winter at minus 17 F. I did manage to squeak out small populations of both species. After a decade of growing, it was not the bamboo I thought they would be. They did not take over the universe. My bamboo forest is more of a bamboo grassland than anything. Yet, even on a small scale and having a diversity of seedlings you can see the difference in the individual plants genetic make up. They easily integrated into my farm under the black walnuts and hybrid American chestnuts.

My goal was to develop construction grade varieties and edible shoot selections. I like the forest type bamboo growing upwards to 70 feet or more. It would take a larger population of 100,000 seedling plants to find hardier and even more robust selections. Bamboo in nature is often a specific clone like the clonal wild blueberry plant on the east coast that covers several acres. It is a specific application with a specific selection needed. Then you can harness the power of bamboo. It might not make a great landscape plant for you and like mint might ruin your flower garden state of mind. But as a source of commercial fiber, timber, lumber, plastic substitute, cotton substitute, flooring, scaffolding, chairs, tables, damn near everything and edible shoots we are on to something unbelievably powerful and life saving and life supporting. These selections could be employed and used to a greater degree in areas where scale, control and use would dominate the plantings in commercial settings. For vigor and health we need the runners of the world. Dense, solid roots holding the soil as a precious resource and slowly bringing back those soils currently filled with GMO corn and soybean. Those soils are ruined and may take a generation to cleanse themselves of the poisons we have put in them. Even if we treat it as a bamboo monoculture or develop it as a bamboo polyculture, it does not matter. Bamboo could easily purify those soils while making our life on planet earth easier and more productive. The power of bamboo is the power of grass. One sheath at a time, creating a forest of perennial possibilities while it forges us ahead in permanent tree crop agriculture.

Think it all started on a corner house on an old brick road.

Onward and upward

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Post: A new variety of River cane, (Arundinaria gigantea) will be available in very limited amounts from Oikos Tree Crops in spring of 2027. This selection of North America’s only running bamboo (Phyllostachys) is one of several forms that are known to exist. Called “High Velocity” full details will be on the Oikos Tree Crops website in 2027. It is a non-patented. Check it out.

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Miracles of Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Unstoppable Power of Bamboo

Paulownia: Grow Your Own Home-It Zooms

Posted on September 17, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

One of my first acquaintances in the tree crop arena was a research technician in the pharmaceutical industry.  He was very passionate about growing his own firewood. This was in an era when the hybrid-popular market was in full swing because of rising energy costs. Everyone wanted fast growing trees, especially for firewood to heat their homes with. The idea was based on growing a tree with a quick turnaround rate from planting to harvest.  Specific selections were developed that were easy to propagate by dormant cuttings. You would stick the cuttings in the ground in rows similar to Christmas trees. He began developing his own selections based on this same model. He told me he found several large popular trees free of canker and the normal dead limbs which is normal in this genus. Many of them were also sterile and free of the giant clouds of seeds that are often produced. Using this same model for lumber to grow your own home is possible if it is built to scale as well as finding the right species.  There is no shortage of fast growing trees one could use.

Such is the case for Paulownia. Not many people know this tree in Michigan. You would see the Empress tree advertised in the Sunday papers as “the tree that zoomed up” as an ornamental tree with lavender bell-shaped flowers. Every now and then I would see one fried back to the ground as a sort of hail Mary to fast growing trees. From a distance it looks like a catalpa tree. One Paulownia tree I still drive by regularly sits with four trunks and a top barely making 20 feet after 30 years.  It is wedged between the sidewalk and the street. The attempt was made to block the view and noise of the street. Hybrid willows soon took that market as the substitute “zoomer”  tree for cold climates.  The minus 16.6 F limitation of Paulownia was just too much to ask for in Michigan where minus -25 F is common.   

I too gave it a go with my limited germplasm starting in the early 1990’s. Like everything I grow, I started from seed. It is fortunate that the Empress tree historically has been used for both its high value lumber and the ornamental landscape trade. It was more than just firewood or wood pulp. It had high value and like black walnut had a following of experimenters and growers. For the United States, Paulownia was an accidental introduction into the U.S. as packing peanuts and then dumped in places like this New York city harbor I was at while at while visiting family. These dumps created small colonies some of which still persist to this day. See below. Growing out of solid rock this was the ideal location for Paulownia. It entered and parked.

I used seeds from the most northern wild trees and tried to find potential hybrid trees collected from arboretums. Above all, I was testing the waters of hardiness.  I began throwing out batches of seedlings that fried after a cold winter.  It was a gritty not pretty selection process. It was less than one per one hundred ratios as survivors go.  The throw out pile took on a life on its own too. The toasted trees were grown in paper pots of which I would pitch them into an open grassy field at my farm.  With living roots still intact, some of the trees hung on.  A couple of the trees emerged as winter hardy past minus 27F.  A second group of intentionally planted wild germplasm trees was also making headway. This area pegged a minus 29F once. The deer were rubbing them periodically. Surprisingly, the speed of callus was also fast which closed the entire wound the following season.

My final ‘hail Mary’ began with the second generation of a Paulownia lilacina (fargesii) tree at my farm which set seed. This was a rare event. Apparently, this tendency in cold climates has been noticed in other parts of the world where the tree has limited reproduction from seeds. This second generation produced 7 additional trees which also showed zero winter damage. These were planted recently near the original tree picking up real estate of the hybrid American chestnuts, hybrid oaks and walnuts. The interesting characteristic about this species is it’s tall, slender growth with very little side branching. It could be just the one idividual I have or the population as a whole. I am still finding out the secrets of this tree. Last year a pileated woodpecker drilled halfway through it. The result was a quickly callused wound. The woodpecker must of thought he hit the hyperspace of woods. There were no carpenter ants.

It is easy to see the possibilities of Paulownia. I went online and purchased Paulownia wood. I watched many Youtube videos on Paulownia cultivation.  I took out a log I cut from one of my first Paulownia trees and began putting it to use in my woodworking. I’m thinking about buying a Paulownia electric guitar. I’m still looking.  Yet, I still  feel I am one tree short of a full rack. I am missing collaboration and secondary monoculture plantings to scientifically analyze and test my trees in other locations throughout the state of Michigan. This may sound sacra religious, but you need a monoculture to make this happen efficiently. You need to allow the roots to resprout and grow as a regenerative perennial based woody crop plant the same way popular is grown and harvested today.  Monoculture is not our enemy. Monoculture can be the start to polycultures. Paulownia could be used in novel ways outside of a plantation.  It is the most valuable woody crop plant available today.  Paulownia has a place in the wood industry just like black walnut and black locust. I’m hoping for a fast and straight growing osage orange tree next.

Trees are zooming by. The empress has spoken.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Interesting Characteristics of the Paulownia Tree and the Things Surrounding Its Cultivation

  • Is considered the world’s fastest growing woody tree. 8-12 feet per year in temperate climates.
  • Has nearly double the fire-retardant properties of pine.
  • Has the highest strength to weight ratio of any wood compared to any other tree. Similar to balsa in weight but much stronger.  The wood is soft and easy to work. I notice it ‘dents’ easily. So for woodworking, it needs a hard finish.
  • The turn around rate from planting to harvest is between 8-12 years. Similar to Christmas trees in Michigan. At my farm, in southwestern Michigan it may take longer.
  • Specific named clonal selections are sterile and free of seeds. This prevents unwanted spread outside the planting areas which makes it easier for the farmer to manage. Some selections do not flower, and others naturally have a low reproduction rate. At my farm, there has been zero natural regeneration from seed. The seed needs to fall on bare soil to sprout. In twenty years, only once did my mature trees fruit. Over a million seeds per pound. My tree tree produced about 6 ounces of seed. The seed only remains viable for one year.
  • Fast growing selections are done by rooted-root cuttings. Root cuttings are clonal and capture the fastest growing trees with the largest diameter trunks. Phoenix One and Shandong are two of a few showing remarkable large diameter trunks nearly double or triple other seedlings. BioEconomy Solutions has developed very fast growing and sterile hybrids by cross breeding three species.
  • Paulownia shows remarkable regeneration. After harvest, the roots are kept active and resprout into a new tree. One established a single root at my farm grew a top 10 feet in the second season.
  • Listed as an invasive species in several southern states as well as worldwide, Paulownia seed free cultivars are a means to grow the tree as a source of wood outside the ornamental market the same way sterile Miscanthus is currently being grown for bedding and cellulose production. Some places allow it in that category. It will take an industry to challenge the laws that prohibit the plant even if it is sterile or flowerless. A good example of this scenario is Berberis (barberry) where even seedless and rust resistant varieties are prohibited despite solving the ‘problem’ of invasiveness and wheat rust. The laws are written this way and do not allow it to exist in commerce. There is also a no ‘use’ allowance. It is worse than the Ribes genus in some ways. I call it the ‘it’s still a hammer’ law. For instance, if I want to grow autumn olive for juice on a commercial scale I would be prohibited from that use in Michigan the same way if it was wildlife food. Possibly there is permitting that would allow it in the future if it is not already established. As you know, you can hurt your thumb with a hammer. Ban the hammer. Or if you want, you can build a beautiful home.

Growing wild forms of Paulownia tomentosa is one means of finding hardier selections into a full Zone 5. This paricular grouping of 10 trees (above image) were grown from seed collected in the wild from Japan. Two of the trees have shown remarkable hardiness. Backed by Cornelian cherry and Chickasaw plums, the chickasaw plums are slowly colonizing this area taking over the understory of the Paulownia. One tree flowered last year but no seed was set. The tallest tree is 20 feet high. Pruning is required to accentuate the growth rate and minimize sprouting from the base which is common with this species.

the forest continues on

Post: A new variety of Paulownia will be offered in spring of 2027 from Oikos Tree Crops. Named “Zoom One”, “Zoom One” was from a grow out of seed labeled Paulownia lilacina. A very limited supply of root cuttings will be offered for further propagation and distribution. It is not patented. A full description and the cost for root cuttings will be put up on the Oikos Tree Crops website.

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Miracles of Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paulownia: Grow Your Own Home-It Zooms

Rediscovered Fruit: The Cornelian Cherry

Posted on August 31, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Cornelian Cherry, Cornus mas

On a camping trip when I was in high school I ate a bunch of bunchberries, Cornus canadensis. It is a common groundcover found in the northern woods of Michigan. The edible wild book that I had said they would sustain you. This was true. It was bland but it was edible.

Bunchberry, Cornus canadensis

Through my camping experiences I found many of the shrub dogwoods had a similar type of texture and flavor. As I started growing the silky dogood, Cornus ammom, in my nursery for wildlife use, I had heard about a culinary type of dogwood used for food for generations in central Europe called the Cornelian cherry, Cornus mas.  It was of great interest to me to hear about the cherry-sized fruits used historically the same way sour cherries are used today. Where would I find such a tree already fruiting? It was not a common tree in the nursery industry and no examples could be found in any landscapes I was familiar with.

Not long afterwards, I found you could easily spot it in March with its faint golden yellowish green flowers when nothing else was flowering. It often flowered before forsythia.  This plant was used in many of the older homes in the city as well as some college campuses. My experience of the plant changed when I happened to be in the older part of town and noticed several large cornelian cherries fruiting surrounded by a parking lot and a sidewalk. Here I could taste the ‘wild’ cornelian cherry.  The extreme tartness was something to appreciate much like the high vitamin C acerola berries that are used in supplements. Two major roads in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan intersect there and the red stains on the cement were clearly visible at the stop light. I knocked on a few doors and got permission to collect and sweep the parking lot. It was a non-profit organization who rented the home, and no one would park their cars underneath the plants during fruit drop. For me it was a glorious mess.  Now I could obtain fresh seeds and eat plenty of the fruit while picking away. Normally I would just suck on them like throat lozenges one at a time.  I would then process the bulk of the fruit back at my nursery for seeds for planting. I even hand picked some fresh fruit for my jam making. The high pectin fruit would make a dense spread rich in red color and flavor.  People spoke highly of it despite its acidic nature.

If the light was red at the corner, people really stared at our fruit shenanigans. Sometimes we would climb up the trees a little and shake the fruits on a tarp below or use pole pruners to release the fruits. It rained fruits at times because the yields were significant on these old trees.  Then we would sweep up the mess with push brooms. Since it was an area with international students, occasionally someone would yell out from their car, “We have this in my country” or “I know what this is.” As if it was a secret handshake to a world of unknown flavors, the cornelian cherry spoke to people who wanted to let me know their connection to the plant. Several people stopped by on the sidewalk and I would ask if they would like a taste. I was happy to see their expression on their faces. Students from Iran, Hungary and China all knew the fruit. Not everyone liked it in the fresh state but smiles erupted despite the tartness. It was the ‘cornel’ dogwood. Dried, made into drinks, compotes, and olives it was collected and harvested the same way tart cherries are used in Michigan. Because of the chart-topping Vitamin C and tartaric acid, it was like a sweet tart candy on a tree.  

The Cornus mas was a forgotten fruit plant and was only remembered as an early flowering ornamental plant in North America. It fell into the forsythia camp of spring flowers. Few knew about the fruit let alone how to make something delicious from it. When the plantings at my farm started fruiting, I would often make jam and offer taste testing at the farm shows I was displaying at. Processed with sweeteners, it became a whole new fruit. Once made into jam, syrup or salsa the fruit became known again as worth growing even on a small scale. Today those trees on that corner in the city are long gone. They were replaced with less obtrusive bushy tufts of native bunch grass, daylilies and stone. The cement painting done by the Cornel has been erased by time.

 I too know that fruit. We have this in my country.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Flowering Cornus mas just opening. Look for it in the spring.

From Seed to Fruit: Cornus mas

Cornelian cherry can easily be grown from seed. The seedlings are almost always heavy bearing and produce similar fruit in size, shape and flavor. It is a very uniform population of fruiting plants with similar characteristics.  Although the plant is self-fertile producing both male and female blossoms on the same plant, it appears from my plantings that having several plants near each other improves the yields. It takes between 4 to 8 years to bring the plant to fruit from seed. Plants are usually 6-8 feet tall at this point. Fruit is produced all along the inside of the limbs in clusters and increases with age. Mature shrubs can produce upwards of 50 pounds of fruit.

The seeds have a long dormancy. They require contact with the soil which breaks down the hard seed coat. This takes from 2- 4 years to release the multiple embryos found within the seed so each seed can have 2-3 individual plants within it. Many of the seeds start sprouting in the second dormancy after winter. This would be a warm and cold treatment twice before sprouting. After the second year some seedlings will continue to emerge after the third winter and a few even into the fourth year. This is just common with a multiple embryo seed and a seed coat which is extremely hard and dense.  Plant ½ to 1 inch deep. Tamp into the soil good as they tend to migrate to the top over time.

Cornelian cherry can be grown commercially from seed as a fruiting plant for processing. There are no insect or disease issues with trees or fruit. Frost seems to have a very limited or no effect on the flowers even if the trees open in February or March.  They flower based on air temperature and warm spells will cause them to flower quickly much faster than apricot or cherry. The flowers are used by different species of hoover flies and solitary bees. Since it is very early in spring few bumblebees or honeybees will use them to any degree unless it is a late spring year.  Cornelian cherry in one of my plantings is heavily producing despite being in the shade of walnuts and hickories. As an understory tree in an agroforestry application, it could provide a source of fruit in semi-shaded conditions.

Two seed sources which worked well at my farm was “Redstone” and “Hungarian”. Redstone was a seed selection from Arnold Arboretum. The fruit quality was slightly less astringent with its slightly larger than normal dark red fruits. Hungarian was seed purchased from fruiting cultivated plants in Hungary. The robust large shrub is heavy bearing producing uniform fruits in great quantity. Other seed sources were not inferior in any way. Most of my plantings were done with both arboretum and private landscape plants. All produced good quality fruit. There are cultivar selections which have improved the edibility of the fruit in its fresh state having higher sugar content or less ascorbic acid content. Dark red fruit is preferred with a smoother flavor with less tartness. Yellow fruiting ones also fall into this camp. These varieties could add to the flavor profiles of the cornelian cherry as a cultivated fruit. Most are not widely available and are expensive to produce taking upwards to three years just to grow the rootstock.  This plant could easily grow in short season areas as ripening is from August to September at my farm in southwestern Michigan. It is hardy into zone 3.

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Rediscovered Fruit: The Cornelian Cherry

Wood is Good: American Chestnut

Posted on August 19, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Hybrid American Chestnut Wood

In my senior year in college, I was employed as a gardener for a home that was near a nature reserve in the city. From time to time, I would cross the street with a wheelbarrow full of spoiled apples harvested from the perfectly manicured lawn I was tending and pour them down a steep slope. It was here in that oak woodland where I saw my first chestnut tree. It was over two feet in diameter and at least fifty feet tall. The ground had several layers of nut burrs underneath it. I was not aware of this tree and looked it up in one of my botanical books. The tree is found sporadically in southern Michigan. Because of the location of the tree and the value of the land, several new homes went up there after the land was sold by the city. The tree was eventually removed to accommodate a garage. I went back to collect nuts before it disappeared forever.  There must have been another one nearby because the burs had a few solid seeds within them.  Without a pollinator, the nuts would have all been blanks. I grew about a dozen seedlings from that tree and planted them at my farm. They grew unbelievably well however they eventually succumbed to blight right about when they started to fruit. I knew this was going to happen so I positioned them near a fence line where they could be cut easily.  That took about ten years.  Luckily, I harvested one log from the best tree and stored it in my barn in the rafters.  Almost four decades later I decided to take up the challenge and make something useful from it. That day is today.

Wood Characteristics

The grain patterns in chestnut wood are very pronounced and stunning. Even on small diameter pieces this pattern is apparent. The hybrid trees show the wide growth rings probably due to their fast growth, some of which are up to an inch in size.  This fast growth creates a very uniform lumber. There is a simple way to use my repository to create even faster growing trees while at the same time having an orchard for nuts. Harvesting the nuts along with the trees for lumber could be done on a small scale now. Further improvements over time could bring together an industry of both nut and wood production which would be more profitable that either alone. The trees would be of a mixed hybrid nature of several species. This mixture greatly improves the odds of resistance and eventual immunity to blight.

Today American chestnut used for wood working is available only due to the reclaimed lumber business. Here planks are taken from old barns and homes where the trees were harvested from standing dead trees after the introduction of blight to North America. This lumber can have drill holes in it from different beetle larvae. The holes give it the name ‘wormy chestnut’. It is the only form of chestnut wood.

Wormy chestnut wood from my farm

According to one seller the planks can have a 20 percent loss on high-quality pieces for furniture making and a 40 percent loss on lower quality pieces used for craft projects. After scouring Etsy and eBay, most of the lumber sold has natural fissures and cracks in it despite it being milled again.  Surprisingly some look very clean and smooth with no fissures too. That is a minor miracle for something that came out of barn used over a hundred years ago. It is considered very rot resistant in that state. One source today on Etsy lists: 7/8 inch thick, six inches wide, three foot long boards. Cost: around 100 dollars. All of these wood sources are found in the historical range where American chestnut once flourished in quantity. You wouldn’t find this in Michigan. There is no new wood. It could be possible to harvest and mill a Chinese chestnut tree. They often have short trunks that branch 2-3 feet from the ground and are pruned for nut production. One of my first Chinese and Korean seed sources came from the late Norm Higgins near Lansing, Michigan.  A few of his seedlings grew fast and had a timber-like form.

Wood Hardness:

American chestnut regional hardness rating is 80. (Listed chronologically from hard to soft.) It is close to Northern Catalpa and Yellow poplar. Chestnut is a soft wood and easy to work. The wood of the European Sweet Chestnut, Castanea sativa is harder with a 680 Janka rating. American chestnut has a 540 Janka rating. Some of the hybrid trees that I have would likely be in between those two numbers. There is differences in the grain patterns of the individual trees.

On growing the American Chestnut, Castanea dentata:

I used to receive a lot of calls in my nursery about the ‘pure’ American chestnut tree. The American Chestnut Foundation used to give out my name as a source for seeds and plants for both the hybrids and the species. Because of the susceptibility of the blight and no means of preventing or stopping it, I never sold the pure trees because I knew what would happen. But it is possible!! The only ‘for-sure’ locations you could grow the American chestnut would be in places completely isolated hundreds of miles from the nearest chestnut tree either planted or natural as well as far outside its native range. Because chestnut blight does survive on oak trees to a limited degree, it would be ideal to live in a completely different bioregion far from oak trees too. The western United States is one such region. You would have to start with seeds and never use nursery stock or scions for grafting. The reason for this is that blight, if it was on the surface of the seed would perish if planted in the soil. The blight on the seed would have no effect on the seeds germination and would not transmit. Scions or cuttings potentially could carry it. One year seedlings likely do not have blight on them but ideally if you went the seedling route you would want them grown in screened polyhouses as one year plants. The blight has to attach itself and grow which normally requires older stems, branches and trunks. I have seen two year old trees with blight on the stems but it is rare but never on one year plants. Ideally you would treat the blight as a living biohazard and be very strict about it. You would never want to visit other chestnut plantings. You would have to decontaminate your footwear and clothes if you did. Certainly you would not want to allow other nut growers to visit your magnificent American chestnut trees. That would be very risky. This has happened in the past!  Many isolated trees have died either through wind born spores or people not knowing what they are doing. I knew of one American chestnut seed source super isolated in the far north in another state that many other nursery people used for seed. Eventually the whole planting became infested and died within a few years. It was thought at the time, people brought that one in. I remember talking to the late Dr. Dennis Fulbright, a leading research scientist on chestnut blight from M.S.U., about these isolated trees that look spectacular in Michigan. He knew of many American chestnut trees and would visit them periodically. I saw pictures of them and they were often huge trees. He said just in his short time of discovery several of these remote and old Michigan trees died just by wind born spores floating in. It was a game of chance and sometimes we blamed ourselves and sometimes nature. Today the community of American chestnut lovers include a wide range of ‘deliver us from the evil blight’ projects to simply discovering and disseminating nuts of wild trees that show immunity. I personally favor the latter.

I was rarely successful at telling people not to plant something more than the American chestnut tree. It was in the same boat as the white birch trees where borers turn them to sawdust. There was nothing I could say to warn people about the risk. They had read so much about the plant in its great historical past that it created a deep passion for a tree important to North America.  For that reason I gave up and always encouraged people but never said anything about what would inevitably happen. I never sold the trees or nuts but did offer words of encouragement. By itself, that type of planting is where ideas can take root which then leads to a means to overcome the fear of loss. In the bioregion of the human brain, a beautiful tree flourishes. Who would say no to that?

Enjoy, Kenneth Asmus

American chestnut wood tables available starting November 1, 2026. For pick up direct at the farm. Appointment only.

From Seed to Table

First treatment with American grown tung oil. (Another valuable North American tree crop.)

Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration, Miracles of Nature | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Wood is Good: American Chestnut

Finding Mulberry: Morus rubra

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Red Mulberry. Morus rubra. In a subdivision in Texas, this tree was pruned to accomodate the home and yard it was in.

I like mulberries and everything about them. It doesn’t matter what type they are. I made the selection Lavender Life red mulberry based on heavy fruit yields. It was not based on percentage of how much it may or may not be native or if it was a hybrid of another mulberry.  For that you would need genetic testing. A colleague of mine found a subspecies of a hackberry not long ago. He sent it in to have it tested and sure enough he was correct in his taxonomy. They published a paper on it somewhere I hear. On the surface, mulberries vary tremendously from tree to tree and if you look online, it is common to see conflicting information. It is possible to ‘ball park’ it. Genetic testing takes the guess work out of it. Over the years people have sent me their thoughts on something I was growing which had variations found within the progeny. Once the ballpark species score card read, 2 for, 2 against and one hybrid tie on a type of Viburnum I was growing. “Not Sure” won that game. For me I go back to my seed sources and the story behind the plants. That is considered quaint and old-fashioned now in a world where everything has to be nailed down. My Viburnum story involved an actual research scientist, a fence row in Alberta, Canada and why someone would live in the middle of nowhere. Here is another story.

The Red Mulberry Morus rubra.

Starting in 2000 I began buying red mulberry seedlings from different wholesalers for my nursery for resale. It was probably the first time they were available nationwide. These are often grown in Missouri and North Dakota by massive nurseries cranking out millions of plants. They resale to other sub-wholesale nurseries some of which I used to buy from. The first batches of trees were across the map in terms of uniformity. I would buy anywhere from 250 to 1000 trees every year or two.  In 2001 I potted up part of a batch and let them fruit in the greenhouse. It was kind of cool to see all the fruit on the three-year-old trees. I felt they did not have much of the red mulberry in them as far as I could tell but the fruit was huge in size.  I mentioned this to the owner of a company I bought the seedlings from, and he said they were constantly improving the seed sources for that species as natural hybrids were common. Eventually those companies must have gone to more southern isolated seed sources like Texas and other southwestern seed sources.

Nice home and nice red mulberry I had a chance to visit.

You can find pure red mulberries in these isolated locations probably due to bird migration and coyotes who also eat the berries. There are also several Texas varieties of Morus rubra. I tried those at my farm, but the grafts failed over time. People know what the red mulberry is and have made selections from it and use it. Some of these places don’t have other mulberries just because the climate is so unforgiving to those species normally found in the northeastern U.S. The downside of this is the seedlings from these new southern batches were also not hardy and frequently came to me with major winter damage.  I attempted again and reluctantly grew some of these sources in pots to fruit. This time they looked very true and uniform to me as far as my limited subjective experience. The original seven trees dropped down to two after deer and a few Michigan winters. This is Lavender Life. See below.

It is isolated to some degree, however roughly 200 feet away is a nice mulberry tree on my neighbor’s land and has been growing there for over 50 years.  I have three red mulberry trees ten feet apart and I am assuming it is a cloud of red mulberry pollen around them like all mulberries which probably causes a great degree of self-fertility.  However, that too would need to be genetically tested to see the percentage in the seedlings or seeds.  

Lavender Life

Here is the part where people tend to get upset. It doesn’t matter. What am I proving or disproving and how is that better?  It appears I am only doing it to placate the nativists and purists. By the way, nature apparently doesn’t care either because hybrids are everywhere in the world of mulberries. Hybrid means different but it does mean bad or worthless. Unfortunately people view all mulberries as weed trees and undesirable. The red mulberry is not losing its identity. It’s adding to its identity while creating new expressions in the real world. That is adaptation. Mulberries have the highest chromosome count in all of the plant world. There is a reason for that. You could also grow it out by finding isolated trees while making new Morus rubra seed sources in an orchard. That I do care about, and it is of great value in generating greater diversity.  It is very cool to think of a hardy form of pure red mulberry, however that is defined by the caretaker or breeder of the line of plants under cultivation. This is called domestication and you are domesticating a wild form of mulberry. Creating new seed sources is critical in that the diversity needed is way beyond the percentage points of native and not native. The mulberry genus is filled with rich flavors and sweetness. I’m picking some today and sharing them with my friend Not Sure.

Enjoy, Ken Asmus  

Mulberry lumber at a local sawmill. This is not a composite. Those are rays of wood sunshine. All glory to Morus alba.
Posted in Diversity Found, Ecology-Biodiversity-Integration | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments