One is a Lonely Number: it just is no good anymore and other fixer uppers in the plant world

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Just one single species of plant can positively change the world in so many wonderful productive agricultural ways. To make the world more fruitful and abundant, crop enrichment could light the way by harnessing new species of plants outside of what we currently use. The one crop that no one wants could be a weed somewhere.  Aligning with the potential of new crops and healthy foods is a direct path to bringing better food and improved human health. Weeds are very good at this.  I view them as nature’s suggestion box. I cultivated many of them and made some slight selections in the process. Even the dandelion has been selected to some degree. It’s picture is featured prominently on all lawn herbicide bottles.

Evidently cultivating the weedy plants is also one of the most controversial activities I was involved with. My nursery was very small scale and rarely made a dent into this new food crop category. Nothing caught on to any large degree. I began to think that possibly I was standing in the wrong field alone and isolated like many of my weed friends. Every now and then people have opinions they like to share on what is good or bad. There were some weeds that fell into the legal category of invasive species. I stayed clear of them in commerce, but secretly I grew a few to see what the noise was about.  Like one of my employees who had a pot growing operation behind a secret door in his closet, I was hiding my weeds in plain sight.  I mean how many times do people look at the plants in the cracks of the sidewalks. No one cares about those plants. I would dig them up and bring them to my nursery and put them in prop trays. I always go to the U.S.D.A. definition of weed as ‘a plant some where and at some time people find objectionable.’  Frankly, I found none of them objectionable. Framed by this, the long-winded emails and pencil written complaints on lined binder paper made me smile.

Biodiversity is a word we cuddle up to. To wander outside into the weed category is a great joy but is thought of as a threat to biodiversity. The plants are sometimes found on this isolated island of potential food plants. Here are two.

Such is the case for the hardy citrus species called trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata. It has been used as understock for citrus and an ornamental plant for over hundred years in the United States. No one has looked at it in any serious way other than a novelty fruit plant with thorns and a zig zag growth pattern. There is some renewed interest in it again as a fruit producer.  The quality of the fruit is questionable, which can be packed full of seeds. In Michigan, it was not a particularly easy plant to establish. However once set, the plants took off after the fifth year. Today my hardy oranges are left alone on a hillside and struggling in a mix of goldenrod and an active groundhog colony. It is alone and far from any form of citrus. Yet far outside its cultivated range also offers opportunities in that there are no pests or diseases that affect it. It grows like a …..weed. I had to protect it with a mesh guard because the deer would nibble on the foliage trying to miss the giant thorns. The last time I checked there were over a dozen states prohibiting citrus plants being shipped from outside of its state. Likely we will see more of this as certain historical ranges change of crop plants and disease, and insects make it unfavorable to grow the crop anymore. With imports soon behind it signals the end of certain fruit farms in different parts of the United States.  Although I have no fruiting plants, I feel enlivened every time I see them. I  have no idea on what I am doing in the world of citrus. I’m from Michigan. Yet already I see differences in terms of hardiness and growth patterns. I also see this same plant being grown by other weed lovers like me. Some of them are secret about it and others are full of bravado and confidence.  I stand in the middle of this field and wonder what its future will offer to the fruit growers of my state and beyond. It is only a rootstock let to grow after a real citrus orchard is abandoned. That sounds promising to me. Alone and free to grow.

Poncirus trifoliata. Japanese Bitter Orange.

To mention you are breeding and selecting autumn olive is controversial. It is one of those taboo subjects and can only be done in certain circles. Once I almost got kicked out of a dinner I was at because the landowner was livid about autumn olives. He only loved native plants. I said it was a good juice plant rich in anthocyanins.  The weed in me was speaking.   It’s high anthocyanin compounds along with its rich vitamins and minerals have huge potential as a perennial crop plant. People are now harvesting it and enjoying the fruit that once was considered ‘wildlife food.’ Other related species like the goumi is also considered desirable and said to be not as weedy although no one planted millions of them like the conservation districts did to test that theory.  For me finding the deep red selections and heavier fruiting plants was both rewarding and an eye opener to its value. It shows the potential of going past the 100 x times more than the tomato mark.  My little gene pool was found at my family’s abandoned Christmas tree farm wedged between the scotch pines and white spruce. These were loners in a population hidden from view. These isolated plants were filled with promises which can be used as an energy drink and a means to fight cancer. The nitrogen fixing capabilities also provide additional benefits in tree crop plantings as an understory plant.  The birds and mammals know this already, which is why you see it everywhere. They recognize its benefits. Now it is our turn. Just some slight selective varieties and this weed will become less objectionable over time. For now, it is a closeted love affair hidden from view and talked about in secret circles on social media under the name Elaeagnaceae, Few notice but some say it is a great fixer upper in the plant world.

The autumnberry is a recapitulation of the now forgotten autumn olive for human use. This was a chance seedling with darker fruit with good yields found many years ago at my families farm. Using selections based on high levels of lycopene along with the culinary means of delivering that goodness be it juice, syrup or supplements could make this a profitable shrub crop. Only a weed can do this. Of course some negotiations with regulatory will be needed or a change in the laws on its cultivation for human use. Oh oh. I just thought of this. Prepare to be met with lined binder paper.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Strength in Numbers: Where Loss Benefits the Whole

Posted on July 8, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Such is the case of using cultivated plants as a means for overcoming disease and other environmental calamities. To overcome obstacles, it takes a population not a lone individual to make that happen. This type of cultivation and selection is a short cut to move the population along in a smooth trajectory while it generates new expressions far outside of what you thought was possible. Plants are very good at surprising you.  You don’t have to hybridize species, but you may choose to because of the dynamics of a hybrid population. That will add to your soup of knowledge about the plant, but it may not be what you want. It was what I wanted only because it was all I had available. I used the hybrid population to my benefit as well as the environment surrounding my farm. It is not possible to live in a world of isolation. The disease is a motivator of sorts and helps plants in terms of adaptation. When you see genetically engineered trees, what you are looking at besides the quiet desperations of research scientists are the failures of both modern sciences to capture the populations as well as the limited knowledge of understanding the value of the whole. It is one of the best examples of destructive technologies applied to plants. Many years ago, I would attend the lectures of the late Dr. Dennis Fulbright from Michigan State University. He was a leader in understanding chestnut blight. He frequently discussed breeding wild American chestnuts only because of the rather ironic twist of breeding selections to create wild. He said you can breed a wild chicken but in the end no matter what the outcome; it becomes domesticated. You bred it. You domesticated it by breeding. That is domestication in its essence.

The generations of plants that I have at my farm are not just random configurations of two or more species. I have seen it in the populations while generating new trees from those populations. My subjective anecdotal experiences could easily be explained as random. It is the interpretation of random that changes within me as it becomes well defined and selected in an effortless way.  It is one of the reasons I am currently measuring those plants which best highlight this effortless way that made it through the cloud of disease and other environmental conditions found at my farm.  It turned out it was not just one and done. As painful as it was to watch my plantings disappear at first, it was a great joy to see the new generation built on top of the mulch of the old.

Here is some of the good, not so good and fading hybrid American chestnut trees which helped make that happen.

Fusion

You see it with oaks. Why not chestnuts? The tree on the left is a Chinese and European hybrid. The tree on the right is Viva, an American hybrid that had over the top hybrid vigor. Viva is no longer with us these days, however the seedlings surrounding Viva are showing more vigor than the parent with strong apical dominance. The blight is still there but its effects are greatly muted. This dampening of the disease may not look pretty but it demonstrates the effects and power of tree callus the same way a tree is injured and the bark is lost in the process. Callus equals vigor, health and power in the world of chestnuts. To make that happen, I let the seedlings grow up and around these two trees while over compensating for the lost due to disease in the process. That worked. As far as the fusion equation of planting trees like this. It is not recommended but I am glad I did this because it added to my soup of chestnut trees and helped in the process. The planting is flourishing again. I dodged a disease bullet.

When you first look at a disease that is on the surface of a trees bark, you only see the outside. This creates a certain uneasiness because you wonder will this continue to get worse or does the blight also have blight and is now in a weakened state. Maybe the tree will make it. I will cut it down and leave a sprout to test it further. This is one of my gritty tests. Recently I dumped 10 pounds of chicken manure on a particurally good tree to see if vigor and disease resistance can be influenced by fertilizer. For a brief moment in time I thought I was a passenger pigeon helping the tree reach high into the canopy.

I use to be quite fastidious in my chestnut plantings removing suckers, understory seedlings and other plants which slowed harvest. Since we were on our hands and knees harvesting I liked the parking lot view. Over time I began to notice some trees had what is called water sprouts. These were very fast growing whips which can put on 8 feet of growth in a single season. Why was this happening? I wasn’t sure so I let several go. This is one of them. Apparently it signals to the tree that the main trunk is under pressure and time for a new top. Part of this is due to the chestnut blight in the top shrinking the crown and stressing the tree. This tree is very productive and has done well generating new plants which are immune to blight. The generations under this tree along with its natural resistance add to the self regeneration of a hybrid population showing good form and resistance to disease.

I wish I could tell you all is right with the world. It is not. In this plant world, loss means salvation. It also means a hole in your heart for something you lost. There is a way around. You just have to compensate for your beliefs and understand it is not what you wanted anyways. These two images of the same tree show both the death and mayhem of destruction along with the regeneration of new sprouts from the rootstock. This type of regeneration depending on the composition of the individual tree moves quickly past the death of the old which can bring it back to fruiting. In my plantings, this was a common experience and shows the overall weakness of the plants in the beginning without the life support of a new generation. I’m keeping the walnut and seedling apples under its canopy while I harvest the wood and coppice. This tree did produce some seedlings for a while and a few are kept along with the walnut and seedling apples. This is one way to benefit my farm as a biodiverse tree crop farm. The seedlings of other trees are also more than the sum of the parts.

T0 PRUNE OR NOT TO PRUNE

I wish I knew what I know now is a common sentiment amoung gardeners. With chestnut trees, you soon find out that just a simple cut can cause problems. This is a case of doing the trimming and leaving a small stub which then trapped the disease. The smooth bark of young chestnut trees are often immune to blight because it has to adhere to something to grow into the tree. As trees mature, the smooth bark becomes less and less on the main trunk. If you prune a tree you are inadvertently creating a nice habitat for the disease to settle in. Yet it is surprising I don’t see more of it because I do love to prune. It is just today I have to think about it more and its repercussions of the trees health than I did in the past.

Sprouting signals both the end and beginning. In cases like the above, it helps the tree wall off the damage, feed the root system and improve the trees health. It might not be enough. A windstorm swept through this area and took out a portion of the top. I will wait.

Scorched Bark

How bad can it get? Disease is part of life right. I wish it wasn’t sometimes. It’s brutal to plants.This highlights the power of the chestnut tree and the over the top response to stop and wall off the damage. The bark has fallen off. The tree barely can leaf out yet it has for the last 20 years. The original tree in the background shows the first go round. The two sprouts on the side show the second go round. Here we see the final showdown of the weakened blight state and a tree that essentially refuses to give up. I had cut this tree down a few times only to let a couple of sprouts grow to see what would happen. I found out. Weakened blight. Power of an elephant encapsulated in a tree.

The Grant chestnut combines the best of the European hybrids with crossing from the American chestnut. Today it has few limbs up in the canopy as the blight took its toll. The trunk is clean. This was one of most vigorous chestnut trees I have. The Grant chestnut tree was grown from a seed of a very weak European tree with minmal nut production from northern Michigan. It happened to have been crossed with a nearby and very healthy American chestnut tree. The original tree is gone. New ones from sprouts as well as seed nuts provide an avenue for a future population to take the place of the lone plant on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. For my farm it was a loss. For me it was a gain. Now it can survive in the real world. I will make a few tables from the wood. Two gains plus One loss equals net happiness with the results.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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You and Your Sandcherry Empire

Posted on July 7, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Have you ever gone for a hike and discovered some interesting fruit along a trail somewhere? It’s a common experience. Such is the case for Prunus pumila or sandcherry found on the dunes of the Great Lakes. The trails that wind their way through the dunes often have large colonies of this plant growing in pure sand hanging out with bearberry and juniper. They self root as they go along and tolerate being unearthed by wind and water as the roots become stems and vice versa. It is a tough little cherry. Most people do not eat the sandcherry fresh and when they do, they find it is too astringent and difficult to snack on like a normal cherry. It creates a very dry feeling in your mouth. Vast amounts of sugar will calm that down and people do make jelly from it. There is one recent selection of it in the landscape trade today used as a native groundcover. Fruit production is not considered a priority so ornamental selections are based on growth habits. Over the years my mission was to find other colors of fruit within this species as well as cultivate it as a fruit crop. Despite my extensive trail wandering on Lake Michigan, Huron and Superior I did not find new colors or types of fruit. But I did make plantings of it at my farm and found it was easy to cultivate and bring it into fruiting from seed. I even made jelly from the fruit too. It created a deep purple jelly with a very strong flavor. I still have a couple of plants at my farm today. At one point I had over thousand plants in several seed beds. Another planting was done using larger upright shrub forms I found along Lake Superior. They had a heavy fruit set and good quality fruit but still with that tang of tartness barely edible in the fresh state. The two species pumila and susquehanae are the ones found in the botanical literature. To me they are very difficult to separate botanically and look identical.

This individual plant was on the shoreline of northern Lake Michigan near Rogers City, Michigan. The remants of a sailboat rudder highlights the rocky shoreline as the perfect place for the sandcherry and not so much for the sailboat.

When I first ran into this plant in abundance and began looking more closely, I began to notice the different forms as well as the fruit quality. The forms went from flat 6 inch tall plants to shrubs to 3 foot tall. The fruit flavor was similar between the many plants I samples yet dramatically improves as the fruit ripens. It must very ripe on the shrub if you want the flavor with the lowest astringency and tartness. Under cultivation at my farm I was met with several surprises. The plants grew very fast up to 5 feet in one year and had heavy production of fruit in the second year.  There was no need to make selections based on individual plants as the species was super heavy in production with very uniform fruiting between all the different plants.  All of the fruit was of good quality under cultivation. The astringency diminished under cultivation with water and fertilizer. This paves the way for cultivation as a species without need for cultivars.

This form was found on Lake Superior and was over 3 foot tall.

The cost of this precocity was the plants were short lived rarely growing past 3 years old. The fruiting stems in particular fail quickly before needing replacement. It is a one and done type of survival on the dunes. It reminded me of raspberries in many ways. This production scenario has been influenced by conditions set in stone on an ecological stage in the dune environment.  You do not have to breed that out. You can harness that power by managing the root systems and generate new plants quickly from seed.  I am sure the yields could be done commercially for jelly and syrup. Despite its short life, it would be easy to grow in a vineyard type fashion. The question remains who would eat this and why? This is where the research should lie in terms of its culinary possibilities. This species is similar in some ways to the higher elevation sour cherries, Prunus cerasus where the fruit size is very tiny and super tart. I grew that for a while and found it had more stone than pulp.

I like the sand cherry. It is a healthy plant growing in barren sand in dry, hot and windy conditions. Few woody plants can survive the dune environment to begin with. A nursery I worked at early in my career had a huge field of its cousin the Western sand cherry, Prunus besseyi. It suffered tremendously from mildew. Within that gene pool were yellow, red and orange fruited plants. Some of my fellow employees would go out during lunch and snack on them while trying to find the best flavored ones. The rumor was the yellow ones were quite good. The owner of the nursery had planted several thousand plants. They were originally grown by huge state-owned wholesalers which called them Improved Hansens bush cherry used in the conservation trade. It still is used a little for rootstock.

It will take you and an empire of sandcherry lovers to establish this Michigan plant for future fruit growers. Having cultured your love of the plant along with your ability to share it with others will make this a reality. No dunes required.

Enjoy, Kenneth Asmus

Sandcherries are self fertile. In my first cultivated planting, the yields were huge compared to the wild plants I have seen on the beach. Having genetically different plants was a great benefit. The pollinators include honeybees, bumblebees and hoover flies.

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Small Potato in a Big Universe

Posted on July 6, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment


I’ve always been fascinated by the potato plant. Every year on vacation while driving to the upper peninsula in Michigan with my family we took a route that happened to be surrounded by potatoes in full flower on both sides of the road. “Look kids, potatoes” Silence. No one said anything. I have shared my experiences with complete strangers about my love of potatoes. It is not a great opener. I remember at one point just prior to speaking about some of my plants at a farm show, several people got up and walked out just prior to when I began. One was a research scientist. This highlights several problems both in understanding crop biodiversity and ways to capture that essence outside of the modern breeding paradigm free from restrictions and protocols. I find it exciting and dynamic. It’s hard to convey and even harder to explain. The potato is not thought of as a glamorous vegetable. To have ‘nature’ do the breeding is my goal. Today there is no shortage of potato varieties and potato breeding. That is why there is silence and apathy in many ways. May I also add it is quite possible I have yet to find a way to convey this importance in a more exhuberant way. I mean you can’t blame the potato for this.

Fruits of the potato from the variety ‘Purple Ease’, a reliable fruiter.


It is a joy to grow potato seedlings from true seeds extracted from the poisonous fruit. I just don’t understand why the marketplace is so impossible to go into and release new varieties. I am out of the loop. It turns out that the universe of the potato is sharply defined and rarely changes. Only people ‘in the know’ accept a new potato variety. You can spew out new spuds like no tomorrow; you just can’t expect people to acknowledge your contribution. They are very busy, bending to the commercial demands of an industry well entrenched with expert breeders. It is a one per 100,000 shot at stardom from numbered seedlings to named variety. Huge resources are needed to make this a reality and even then the highway of potato development is littered with the cultivars of yesteryear. However, this is also a perfect place to be in terms of discoveries because everyone else is focused on only what will please the potato industry. The plant breeders themselves are also highly defined and regimented, limiting choices even further. It is from this platform you can redefine the value of this most widespread food plant. That is the contribution you can make. You might feel like a small potato in a big universe. It is not left to chance. It is left to your creative energies and a way to find the expressions adapted to your environment. This is your universe redefined and made to be shared to others creating health in its wake.

My solution was simple. I read nothing. I know nothing. I am nothing. I want pure subjective experience not objective knowledge of the potato, Solanum tuberosus. When I start, I am not really looking for a specific outcome. I want to look at all the wonderful treasures of diversity when I get there. So whether it is teeny or a pound each, dark purple or white, it does not matter much. I am not going to pick the brightest or biggest jewel and run off with my find. I am trying to create a population not a variety. If one comes along, that is fine but it is less important to me. Last year, I relinquished and released one I named Tranquility. Tranquility had the trait of incredibly dense root hairs as well as high yields and short season prior to virus infection. It takes a population that expands and flourish over time free of disease, insects and virus in a less than perfect potato world where spray is not used to buffer the countless things that also love the potato plant. Only a population can do that. In this way, generations get stronger over time by creating progeny that expand the potato’s adaptation to your environment. For me the population is the individual. It is potato consciousness reflecting the full range of the potato.

Here is an example of different seedling potatoes grown from true seed. The down side of this if you decide to continue by growing from tubers is the inflication of virus which carries over from year to year to the point where the plants become too weak to produce any sort of yield. That in itself whittles down the population greatly reducing the number of true seed bearing plants.

Just prior to the pandemic, I was trying to find a greenhouse in my area that would grow upwards to 50,000 seedling plants in blow molded trays just like marigolds. The idea was I could make available in bulk the seedling potatoes I developed as Perennial Perpetual Diversity Potato. You grow and sell it from true seed in a similar way slips of sweet potatoes are sold. To do this I contacted several greenhouse operators. I did find one smaller producer that would grow them given enough lead time. Because of the premium greenhouse space for other crops like pansy’s and petunias it was difficult to get my foot in the door. The potato seed would be best pelletized because it is so small. Most greenhouse companies in my area near Kalamazoo, Michigan are massive bedding plant operations and locked into one or two seed companies. They view my seed as potentially hazardous in that it has never been tested or used to any degree. It would be better to have another seed company set it up as pelletized and screened for virus. This was not an easy row to hoe.

Park Seed company offered Clancy and won an All American Vegetable in 2019. They also offered Zolushka, a true seed potato, that produced massive tubers in my plantings in one year. A company called Cultivariable has some of the most diverse seed and tuber offerings I have ever seen. I think he grew out the whole USDA potato seed repository! I grew the indigenous North American species called Four Corners potato. It was not adapted in Michigan. This was a common occurrence to me. The numerous related species potatoes did not survive long. I thought it was a good idea but eventually went back to my old standby diploids from the heritage blue potatoes. From what people have told me is that all modern potatoes are male sterile and no longer reproduce this way. Hence the bottleneck of crop biodiversity.

When potatoes fly is the only way to see the root strength and structure found within the soil. ‘Purple Ease’ has this structure which has held up over a decade of growing outdoors in many locations throughout my farm.

Healthy foliage is a must under heat, drought, virus and insect resistance. This is Purple Ease potato this spring.
Fertile flowers help in producing fruit and this one did not set. Bumblebees love these flowers. It appears they are the primary pollinators. Other species of perennial horse nettle in the Solanaceum family also flower at the same time and are used by bumblebees.
A bouquet of flowers from the Feral variety. From all these flowers only one fruit will set. Yet one fruit can contain hundreds of tiny seeds. So one is good.

The potato still has a story to tell and will continue long after I am gone. It is a lot more exciting than it lets on. The universe it lives in is huge and filled with wonderful diversity. I may have appointed myself as its reluctant spokesperson and proponent for now. Soon others will follow. They too will find themselves as a small potato in a big universe. I guess you could say humility breeds potatoes.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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A Canvas and Some Paint

Posted on June 27, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

A Story of Creative Forestry and “Sweeta” Wild Black Cherry-Prunus serotina

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A wildlife camera captures fawns is late April at the highest point on my farm.

It is very interesting to learn about the relationships people have with nature. I love hearing stories from people who farm and discover plants and animals. Some of the ideas people employ are very structured and defined depending on what they feel is important. When people visit my farm, they sometimes offer me advice. I am forever a student so I love to listen. Most everyone is open to new ideas about the world of edible plants. It is their recreation or as I like to say re-creation. If you look at the surrounding land next to my farm, it has changed over time based on who owned the land as well as what they wanted to do. I have one neighbor that is a commercial grape grower. Two neighbors have created huge yards of several acres of grass. One of the grassy neighbors built a stream and waterfall in his yard. One neighbor has a scrap yard filled with metal, old boats and abandoned cars. Another has a small lawn and has done essentially nothing other than plant some of the conservation district plants over fifty years ago. One neighbor has created a gun range amidst an ever expanding sassafras colony. I would say the landscape that has changed the least is the grape vineyard. There every vine and row is uniform and precise. Nothing has a chance there. The trade off is Concord grapes for Welches. Its delicious.

I am a bit surprised when I look out past my fence line because my farm is so radically different in vegetation than the surrounding homes and farms. Initially my farm was wide open grass and pasture. It was managed as a hayfield prior to me purchasing it and planting trees. Even today, it is still a good canvas for my plantings as I add to it. I do as little as possible and to gain the greatest amount in terms of yields of fruit and knowledge of future crops for use on a broader scale. It is one solution of many that could be applied to help future generations in the rough and tumble world of climate change by making resilient crops and orchards. It can be replicated and more importantly it can provide income with minimal resources while providing healthy crops to create healthy humans. The canvas can do miracles.

Early 1990’s nursery and field with tree tubes filled with chestnut and oak trees. The nursery soil has a hint of grape look to it because I used the grape pulp delivered to me from the Welches grape juice factory 3 miles away. The sawdust mulch I purchased came from nearby millls south of me from many different Amish wood mills and pallet factories.

Land use revolves around what the owner desires. Some have ideas but no plans. That was me more or less. I have no idea why someone needs a massive lawn but it does not matter. The owners like it clipped and manicured to various degrees. Recently one of my neighbors has begun to mow in a huge sweeping robust fashion. He has dropped the deck of his mower as low as it goes scalping the soil as he goes into his mow state of mind. hummmmm. I know at one point he fell into the trap of the burn mentality. This put him in the hospital due to smoke inhalation of which he stills suffers from today. It brought in the local fire department and destroyed over fifty persimmon trees on my farm along the border. It killed most of the trees and melted the tree tubes into a pile of goo. He had this idea of creating biodiversity in its wake. Instead it brought him sickness. Biodiversity did not arrive so he is now in the world of mow.. I keep thinking that this canvas he created by mega mowing is magnificently clean. It’s a nice canvas but no subject matter has yet appeared. It will likely remain blank until a future owner would likely see some possibilities and add to it. When he eventually stops, a huge array of plants will now have the chance to seed in and grow like crazy. Nature will go now, now, now with huge brushstrokes using all available seed resources within the soil and the plants surrounding his yard. Some of my plants could grow there. I noticed some of his viburnums growing under my walnuts. He has a large hedge of arrowwood viburnum, Viburnum dilatatum, so his landscape is contributing to mine. Some of his paint got on my canvas.

Tree tubes with hazels and chestnuts. Birch resistant to borers and hickory with thin shells.

Many times the existing landscape contains some great jewels you might not be aware of. Such is the case of the wild black cherries, Prunus serotina. It is the paint that drops from the sky as birds often carry the pits in their beaks as they strip off the fruit. It is one of the most common understory plants at my farm and is by far the tree that spreads the greatest of any single plant I have ever grown. Early in 1980, my pasture contained four nicely established black cherry trees. I limbed them upwards as they grew. They were in the middle of the fields on the hills isolated from one another. As time went on I could no longer climb or prune them. I put owl and kestrel boxes in them at first. After talking with another tree friend down the road, he commented that many of the black cherries in the area had fantastic strong upright growth habits with excellent branching. He too was using pole pruners and eliminating the often found narrow crotch angles so common with this species. He had found some of them had strong apical dominance and were easy to guide upwards. He kept those and removed weaker trees competing with his new idea of a black cherry woodlot. None of the trees he planted. They were growing in an abandoned vineyard. This inspired me. As a result, I began to take notice of one tree in particular and found the fruit to be delicious and non-astringent to the point it was possible to eat fresh off the tree without wincing. Eventually I made a delicious jam which tasted like a black cherry concentrate. Because of my voracious pruning, it became difficult to pick the fruit so now I have a way to shake certain branches to drop the fruit when it is ripe. Once I grew the South American subspecies of black cherry called “Capuli” . Winter froze them to the ground every year. They looked like peach trees. The Mexico origin plants have very large fruit and are harvested specifically for fresh eating and preserves. This particular subspecies has hybrids which could make for an entirely new orchard crop and combine with a high value lumber crop available from seed without making cultivars.

“Sweetaa” Wild Black Cherry=Selected specifically for its non-astringent fruit and straight growth habit.
“Sweetaa” Wild Black Cherry=Fruit size is slightly larger with higher fruit-seed ratio. Selected seedlings can be done from this individual as well for vigorous growth for timber production. Some seedlings from this group show great vigor in the two year first generation trees. This is the beginning of creating an ‘improved’ seed source all from this one tree.

There is a certain twist in the story and picture of the native black cherry. Prunus serotina is called a stable tetraploid. It shouldn’t exist and shouldn’t be able to reproduce. This is a problem in terms of explaining it in a scientific way with its genetic background. It is thought to be a natural hybrid of two unknown cherries but they two are non-existent and lost to evolutionary time. This tetraploid sticks out like a sore thumb in the ‘naturalness’ of the Prunus world. No one has been able to replicate it through the cross breeding of species and to top it off, it is native from South America all the way to Maine. When I consume the fruit off my “Sweeta” tree, I have the thought that maybe in the evolutionary past the cultivated sweet cherry we enjoy today as Prunus avium crossed with another widespread species the chokecherry, Prunus virginiana. It has the flavor of both species. This shows us a path to creating a healthy sweet cherry orchards in the future and answer the question of its genetic make up while providing a no-spray healthy fruit.

We can paint like nature and add to the portrait of this wonderfully diverse world we live in. Those plant resources no matter their origin add to the landscape in a way that far exceeds our ability to understand the connections plants make to themselves and the animals that live around them. Nothing in nature is hard core in a belief system stiffling creativity. That cherry shouldn’t exist the same way the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. It can be whatever you want it to be. You can follow the course of adding plant resources in the form of paint. All else will follow your path. Good, not good or indifferent. You are the artist.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Once a field, now a forest.
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Asparagii of Unknown Origins

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

For many years I was on the hunt for wild asparagus seeds for my nursery. I needed asparagii but only from seed. Not far from my nursery was a real life asparagus nursery which was 100 percent clonal. The asparagus industry is very specific in its varietal selections. Seed production is the opposite as only male plants are cloned. My idea was completely out of the loop. I was on the horn making calls and writing letters that required stamps. Asparagus seeds were hard to come by. In the meantime, I went Euell Gibbons “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” and collected wild seed in my area. I didn’t have to look far because I live in an area that produces commercial quantities of asparagus Because of this you will find wild asparagus along the roadsides the same way you would find wild sweet cherries. I had several very nice bird plantings of it at my farm. I grew the plants from seed and sold them as the ‘Very Wild’ asparagus. One of my farmer friends down the road brought me some beautiful five foot tall stalks filled with the bright red berries. The plants are either male or female and finding female plants with heavy berry set was not as easy as you might think. There was a fairly large bird dropped repository near a highway off ramp that I was eyeing but the plants were mowed and sprayed several times so I gave up that location. I heard a story of a truck driver getting a ticket for stopping along this same highway to pick wild asparagus. He too went Euell Gibbons and paid a price for his love of asparagus. Picking asparagus is not an emergency on a major highway and you can’t just stop because you found free vegetables. It was a sad day for stalking the wild asparagus.

Meditteranean Asparagus-Well known species asparagus

What I did find was that people around the world harvest wild asparagus. The exact species may vary a little depending on the location. It is widely appreciated and used for both medicine and food. It was the international global usage that attracted me to the plant as I began to investigate many other species and wild strains of the common asparagus. Here were a few:

Meditteranean Asparagus – Asparagus acutifolius

This evergreen species is one of the original wild selections known for its strong and desirable flavor. In Michigan it was not quite hardy enough to make it past a minus 20F winter. The Bulgarian seed source appeared to be the best. It needs a dry location and the polyhouse was not good for me despite being one zone warmer. A few plants did make it through the winter though. If I had a bigger population, I might try again. The problem lies in regulatory of which asparagus seed is forbidden to import. (It might of changed since I last checked into this 20 years ago.)

Asparageyser Asparagus – U.C. Hybrids Asparagus officinalis

These are numbered California selections and now widely available. They are grown from seed said to be disease and drought resistant. To me they were no more vigorous than my Michigan seed sources however I did not get them past fruiting age. I am currently replanting two of the numbered selections to try again. I am also planting it with other asparagus to try to make more vigorous crosses.

Death Valley Asparagus– Asparagus officinalis

This was a seed lot from J.L. Hudson, Seedsman found as wild plants in old homesteads in and around Death Valley, California. These wild populations were essentially let go to reproduce and spread. Some are over 100 years old. This type of population contains huge genetic resources for farmers today who grow asparagus commercially. I see nothing but good from these wild plants which are in the same camp as the I-94 truck driver plants in Michigan. This is a means of using valuable resources right in front of our faces where the weed becomes our salvation.

Vining Asparagus- Asparagus verticullatus

This particular species from Siberia did not like the heat in Michigan and kept going dormany early. This eventually weakened the plant to the point of no return. It was short lived at my farm. It is said to grow 15 feet tall. It too prefers a dry soil and would likely thrive in cold dry climates. I would try this again partly because of its immense size. I would love a 20 foot asparagus plant. Who wouldn’t?

Purple Dutch Asparagus officinalis

Overall this particular seed strain was very good. However, eventually some viral infection reduced it to rubble dramatically making it look like it was hit with herbicide. I’ve seen this before. Asparagus can be tricky to grow. One year you are swimming in spears and next year it is time to replant. This strain was not entirely purple. It has purple stripes in the lower portion of the cutting. It was a seed strain with potential due to its vigor and dark green healthy foliage.

Like any wild plant under cultivation, it takes several seed sources to really narrow the focus on what works best. The best way to accomplish this is to have larger volumes of seeds to create the future populations of this delicious and well known food plant. You could also create new varieties in the process but it takes a long time to find the sweet spot of cultivation, heavy yields, flavor and persistence in the field despite all the other insect and viral problems.

Asparagus has always been part of my pasture. Planting trees near it is difficult due to the thick stringy roots. This plant is at least 30 years old now part of one of my chestnut plantings. Shading of the trees dimishes the vigor.
Siberian Asparagus

Asparagus schoberioides or Siberian asparagus is found in Japan and Korea. There it is harvested as a wild perennial green and used pretty much like all of the asparagus kingdom. It the clumpiest plant I have ever grown. I hit it a few times with my tiller. The tiller went air born like I had hit a long forgotten oak stump. It only produced seeds once. Since growing it, I have attempted to grow out seedlings in a way that would allow me to harvest and eat the plant as well as look at all the natural variation found in its population. I also plant seeds of Mary Washington and Seed Savers Ott selection within the planting clusters I am doing this spring. The big surprise of this species is the beauty of its dark green stems. The density of the thick dark green foliage indicate a nutritious vegetable rich in nutrition. We need to tap into this wild food as a wild food under cultivation too.

The smaller stems of the many wild selections and the variability is an asset. We could expand the asparagus as a perennial pasture green. Like sorrel, you would grow it in dense beds in a way that it could be cut or mowed like salad greens. It would be a fresh green used the same way as arugula. This would increase its usage and reduce the labor force needed to hand harvest it. Siberian asparagus is resistant to all insects, virus and disease compared to the cultivated asparagus. It also is highly competitive in the soil and could easily create a long lived perennial vegetable. I wonder if it would make a nutritious green drink as well. I will know until I have larger amounts to worth with in some culinary way.

To find, create and develop the asparagus plant, we need to look in places of unknown origins and reproduce those wild populations in mass as a self sustaining wild food in a cultivated setting. Then we could create the medicinal and the nutritious perennial green we see hiding in the grass.

Asparagii is good.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

It is hiding in plain sight.
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The Jerusalem Artichoke Goes the Distance

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

It’s a root. It’s a tuber. It’s Super Sunflower.

One of the great joys of growing plants is when you find a unique plant with characteristics in what would be considered impossible odds from a sea of uniformity. Because it’s the Jerusalem artichoke, the value would be determined in a wavering, undefined application as a potential food source used in novel ways. Few people eat artichokes and there is no large scale plantings used in commercial agriculture.

Supernova Sunchoke-Discovered as a seedling in a grow out of from seed plants.

This is the case of the Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus. For many years I attempted to collect seeds from the variety Stampede with the attempt to create new selections. At the time there were only three varieties in the gardening industry. Stampede was one such variety from New York available from Johnny’s Seeds in Maine. The result of my seed harvest produced a lot of blanks rarely creating fertile seeds. The first time I produced ten plants from a half a grocery bag full of seed heads. As time went on, I added many other selections from all over the world. The sunchoke had made great strides in many countries searching for potato substitutes, flour and fermented products. There were hundreds of varieties all of which were originally selected from seedlings that people have discovered since the 1700’s.

The polypropylene bags and weed mat allow you to grow individual varities without having them mix or spread into other nearby areas. It’s an easy plant to harness its power without being overwhelmed with delicious food.

The result of me growing thirty varieties in one teeny 50 by 50 spot (see above) all within bee and butterfly distance was that some selections produced almost full heads of seeds. What is even more interesting is that both the annual sunflower and the sunchoke can cross pollinate and create fertile seeds. In stark contrast, the online information proclaims sterility and growing such a seedling if you could is futile. In real world scenarios, the history of sunchoke says the complete opposite. The artichoke has gone the distance before and it will do it again.

Stampede Jerusalem Artichoke-Helianthus tuberosus-Johnny’s Selected Seeds variety.

Just before I quit growing and selling sunchokes in the nursery, I was fortunate to obtain seeds of this perennial and annual cross as well as other Russian seed strains some of which were hybrids with the sunflower, Helianthus annus. The USDA maintains a repository of seeds obtained from different Russian research projects from Leningrad. I noticed that the seedlings that I grew out were not the normal smooth tuber selections that people grow to eat. Many had long stringy tubers with massive root systems which quickly outgrew the pots I had them in. It was akin to a dense sod of sunflower roots. This was a Eureka moment for me. This discovery was not like everything else I was growing. I began the process of weighing the highest yielding selections and found one seedling that produced nearly ten times the weight of all the others. The roots were like white string beans in size with omnidirectional branching. After closing the nursery, the Russian sunchokes sat in one of polyhouses with no irrigation for two years.  A few squeaked through by existing on the air moisture in the house. Last year after removing the poly and the nearby polyhouses, I began the process of setting up a more formal growing environment where they can thrive in the wide-open world minus the deer munching on them. The most productive plants were also the survivors.

What Value is This?

Now onto seed production. Using seeds for a tuber crop versus an easily degradable and bulky tuber makes seeds a preferred method in both annual and perennial systems. It can be combined with other seeds and used as seedlings of increasing complexity along with a means to generate new varieties in the process. A population can generate a greater range of plants which in turn can further expand the use of the plant and its adaptation to a wide range of environmental conditions. You can even create new selections of it specifically tailored to your soil and climate. A sunflower deserves no less. This is what the Russians saw within the plant the same way they developed black oil sunflowers. Today a few sunchoke genes are naturally found within some sunflower varieties. Everything is now highly bred but few have tread into the perennial sod sunflower breeding only because there is no need for it. The value of the sunflower overshadows everything else.

The value is to create a new perennial forage plant along with the tuber crop. You end up creating a type of “perennial sod” forage sunflower. The density of the plant and its ability to compete with its intensive root system and healthy foliage makes this a possibility. Just add honeylocust, hop trefoil, alfalfa and other perennial forage plants creates a more permanent tree crop agriculture that brings balance to the animals that consume it and improves the soil biology requiring no outside fertilizer imports.

I found this type of root system several times before when I began growing and naming sunchoke seedling selections. I first grew them from seeds into peat pots in one of the polyhouses. The peat pots exploded with tubers. A few had very long and narrow roots that looked like horizontal carrots. Some were delicious too. When I put them into large grow bags, it looked like a root whirlpool. These same varieties also produced a lot of viable seeds.  I called them “ White Diversity”. The tuber flavor was more like eating a pine cone infused with cardboard. This is perfect because it was less attractive to small mammals. It was edible but not desirable. The flower production was the highest of all sunchokes with very good seed set. They were early flowering almost a month ahead of the other selections. If you ever see goldfinches eating your seed heads you know you have successfully achieved fertile seeds. We had to bag them prior to harvest. Think mint but with starchy sunflower roots. The roots are easily reproduced by cuttings but the future lies in its seeds and not clonal because of the difficulty of maintaining root quality in storage. It is not like the potato or daffodil industry.

The impossible odds have narrowed to a point. It is hard to know what a sunchoke thinks and harder to know what action it will take in the future. The flexible nature of the sunchoke reveals many possibilities still as it goes the distance. Can we keep up?

I knew this guy that used to watch his garden grow. I worked at his home for a while before I farmed full time. He had a chair in the sun just past the white pine forest he planted. He would sit there and close his eyes facing the garden. What was he thinking?  Sometimes the chair was empty when I came to work in the morning. The impulse sprinkler kept time as it made its semi-circular rounds. Sometimes we would talk and laugh at random things while he sat in front of his garden and I toiled away. Once his wife asked me why Ted was laughing so much when we were together? I did not know. We would only talk. Then it would be quiet and he would close his eyes again. What was he thinking?

Enjoy, Kenneth Asmus

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Taco Bebbs Oak: Increasing Diversity

Posted on May 9, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Bebbs Oak  Quercus x bebbiana  Quercus macrocarpa x alba Bur-White Hybrid Oak

When I first started my oak collection, I found myself wheeling and dealing in acorns. It was like poker but with acorns. Everyone wins. Diversity increases.

“Hit me.”  

It was the only way to get small samples of fresh acorns of diverse trees. I found myself surrounded by a small group of people which was strictly defined by the love of oak trees. Everyone in this exchange group was totally jacked on sending samples for propagation. It was super reliable and accurate right down to the location. Communication was mail. USPS.

During this time, I had heard about a hybrid bur and white oak called Taco. It was near a dumpster in the back parking lot of a taco restaurant in Springfield, Illinois.  Past president and one of the founders of the International Oak Society, Guy Sternberg had made the discovery.  I was visiting Illinois on another seedy mission, and he took me over to visit the tree. There is something about a green dumpster that accentuates a tree’s growth patterns. Surrounded by old school railroad ties dipped in creosote, the tree was not letting up in the hybrid vigor department. “Taco” had large clean foliage and a strong central leader growth. I was familiar with the Bebbs oak. I found one tree here in southwestern Michigan along a road on a bicycle ride that seemed to be intermediate between white and bur oak and grew seedlings from it.  What I found was that the seedlings grown under average soil conditions made very fast-growing trees with one plant that flowered and set acorns in three years from seed. This type of precocity along with fast growth is a win-win in finding faster growing oaks which could be used for both food and lumber.  Keep in mind this is a growth rate nearly double or triple a normal white oak tree and precocity clocking in under 25 percent of a normal white oak. I found other Bebb’s oaks in my seedling beds of bur oak. It was rare from my collection of acorns in park trees. I was averaging one tree per one thousand seedlings. I would move them to my plantings out back thinking I had found a diamond in the rough.

Taco Bebbs Oak acorn-bur oak bark

Bebb’s oak can be produced from 2nd and 3rd generation seed. The vigor is also found in the progeny. I made a few plantings around my farm most of which was in the missing trees of well-established American persimmon hedge along a fence line. The ability to accurately measure fast growth is best done over two decades while measuring height, trunk diameter and density of the crown. When growing them you do not want nursery conditions with sprinkler systems pumped with urea.  It must be reproducible from acorns in below average soils.

Taco bebbs oak seedling within American persimmon and hican hedgerow. The tree sticking out from the base of the trunk is an American persimmon I planted years earlier. This particular hybrid oak seedling is one of the largest caliper trunks at my farm.

This is the joy of growing oaks. J. Russel Smith author of Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture thought the oaks should sue the poets for proclaiming that oaks are slow growing. People see a large oak tree and think it is kind of an immortal being growing beyond several human lifetimes averaging one inch a year. This view creates a kind of self-defeating role in how we think about oaks and their importance for wood and growing them for food in an orchard for acorns. Someday 2 by 4’s will be made out of solid oak not yellow pine. Houses will not blow down or wash away. Gluten free will include super nutritious acorn flour.

It will take new germplasm like the Taco bebbs oak to jack up our the white oak compontent of our forests. We removed the most vigorous trees several times now. To generate that sort of vigor out of a population like oak becomes increasingly difficult. It is like a played out gold vein. There are many of these crosses found throughout North America but you have to bring them forward out in the public domain otherwise they remain hidden as an untapped resource. Some are in collections like mine and others sit in parking lots and woodlots here and there. This same type of fast growth rate was also found within a population of park trees. It only takes a few thousand trees to see it amidst the progeny. To me it often feels like raising your hand in a crowded auditorium. Only those near you who share similar interests see it.

I know an avid grower and selector of plants who has permission to walk the commercial seedling beds of a nursery and tag trees during the growing season. He looks over thousands of seedlings looking at growth rate, leaf and tree structure and bud formation. He has a great track record of finding excellent trees. I wonder at times if he uses a form of plant communication. He tags them and then comes back in the fall to dig and plants them on his land. We can harness this young and evolving genus by bringing them into production for acorn and hardwood production. My hand is up.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Biodiversity in Fruits: 250 Year Old Pear Leads the Way

Posted on May 3, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment
Stacy Pear Before

Diversity Expands In Novel Ecological Ways

If you look at all the different systems of growing food, the plants used in human designed systems cannot regenerate on their own and go in what could be called creative directions outside what the original human intentions were. There is no improvisation allowed. You stick to the script of rows and uniformity. Unfortunately, the “you just can’t let everything go roughshod over your land” philosophy is alive and well. Once in a while I’ll tell people to run away from this. Few listen and collisions occur as people follow the ecologically misguided. I’m here to say that not only can you let everything go roughshod, you can help let everything go roughshod in a way that also benefits your objectives. You do this by being a facilitator not a destroyer while improving the agricultural crops you feel most passionate about. Let me show you an example at my farm. I promise to improvise.

When I first started my farm, there were several established ten-foot-tall black oak trees surrounded by a thick grass pasture. As time went on, I removed the lower limbs of the pasture oaks to allow more light to penetrate the canopy and make the tree grow taller and have a clean branch free trunk for the first 24 feet of height.  Eventually I added a screech owl box attached to the first branch. Below is the crotch I had the box attached to.

Black oak-Quercus velutina

In the early 90’s, I planted a grafted pear cultivar called Stacy pear about 60 feet away from this tree.  This pear selection from Stacyville, Maine was a 250-year-old tree known for its fruit quality and hardiness. It was a mammoth pear tree reaching 60 foot tall in a full zone 3 hardiness. It had been through some tough winters which is not far from Mt. Katahdin.   I purchased it from St. Lawrence Nursery. Today it is available from Fedco Seeds in Maine called the Stacyville European pear. The tree grew well and fruited lightly a few times before several blistering days over 100 F made fire blight very active. More than half of the crown was destroyed. Apparently this is a common weakness with this selection as well many other European pears.

Stacy Pear After. Spring 2026.

I really liked the history of this tree and felt it was important to continue the legacy but this time through its diverse germplasm from seed.  I began the process of collecting the seeds and growing their seedlings. Funnily enough, this same ‘idea’ was happening without my knowledge under the black oak tree. It became a favorite place for squirrels to haul pears up the trunk and consume the seeds of the fruit. They occasionally eject full seeds with the fruit which then gets covered by deer stepping on them pushing them into the soil and covered by leaf litter. It also appeared the fruit was getting moved by raccoons. Everyone loved Stacy pear! Eventually, I was able to produce a couple of dozen seedling trees in my greenhouse and selected the most vigorous trees for my planting. During the winter months while doing pruning I limbed the black oak pears upwards to prevent deer browsing.  Today they all exist as 30-40 foot tall timber like trees as a component in a mixture of pawpaw, bitternut hickory, Montana yellow fruited American cranberrybush and hybrid chinkapin and swamp white oaks. The pears’ characteristics combine immunity to fireblight, fast growth rate and heavy fruit production. There is no practical way you can spray them as the fruit crop is high in the canopy. The idea was they could also double as specialty wood producing trees for musical instruments if the planting is thinned or when the trees die as well as delicious fruit. Grafted cultivars could exist for timber and fruit production. This wavy line of fruit versus wood is more apparent in some seedlings and has yet to be evaluated and selected.  I’m just happy I was able to take part in the Stacyville legacy which took me only 30 years. Things went roughshod very nicely.  

Stacy pear seedling and black oak

The last step of this tree crop biodiversity equation is preservation through dissemination. It does no good to be locked into a collection or a botanical garden where it is “look but do not eat”.  After 250 years, it is time to move on outside of todays orchard environments. Stacy leads the way. I’m a big follower. Join me.

Enjoy. Ken Asmus

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The Inbetweeners

Posted on April 25, 2026 by Biologicalenrichment

Hybrid American Chestnuts: Castanea dentata x mollissima

When I first started my nursery, I was always trying to find new seed sources to grow trees. A lot of my early sources were people known to me by reading Organic Gardening Magazine and Mother Earth News. I read these periodicals at the library in the magazine section.  (I’m old.) I also joined many fruit and nut growing organizations. One of these discoveries was a source for American hybrid chestnut seed called the ‘Douglas’ hybrids. This was a seedling discovery found by late Earl Douglas in New York who had planted the Manchurian and American chestnuts within wind pollinating distance of each other. He soon noticed the in-between progeny of the Manchurian chestnut and American chestnut and then let them fruit. His American trees eventually died, and his hybrid trees continued onward showing resistance to chestnut blight. Chestnut blight is not controllable. Nothing is left standing using the all-American chestnut, so I was very excited to find this seed source. Here is his pamphlet reproduced here. (Still searching for it. Sorry for the delay.)

For many years like clockwork, I grew the Douglas hybrid chestnuts all from this one source from two separate growers. Along with two cultivars called “1” and “1A” that were a generation or two away from the originals, I could produce enough trees for my nursery. I found a few other seed sources that people discovered called the “Simpson” and “Gellatly” hybrids. These were a great blend of three species including the European chestnut. I was able to grow a thousand trees every year. Eventually I made selections from the seed beds to plant in my outback as I continued selling the hybrid seedlings in the nursery trade. I had the idea of creating a seed orchard of hybrid chestnuts hoping for the ‘new and improved’ version to grow at my farm. I chose trees based on fast growth and good branch structure with strong central leaders. The sales of the in-betweeners was a challenge. It was consistent putting it in the top ten plants sold at my farm. People did wonder, “Is it one thing or another?” and “Does it matter if they are all mixed up?”  Today it is a different retail environment, and the hybrid is understood and desired as many other seed strains are available for orchard cultivation. Along with that is also the pure and illustrious thinking of the holy species where people shun the crosses because they have a species bias. This falls into the native only camp. Each species cross is different. Most are for nut production which uses specific Chinese cultivars. I focused on a taller timber tree much like the American chestnut that is blight free. I was not a fan of intensive selection so I did what is done in the oak world and created hybrid swarms. In this scenario, you keep what you think is the healthiest plants from an open pollinated population with the fastest growing and apically dominant forms. Nut production is unknown at this time.

         

Ken’s Select Chestnut grown and selected from the Douglas Hybrid American Chestnuts

The mini repository of all things Castanea that I was planting allowed me to see this great diversity with the in-between hybrid populations. I knew I needed the healthy vascular system like the Chinese chestnuts. Over the years, I found many unique attributes to growing the inbetweeners. There were plants in my seed beds barely two months old with seed burs on top of the plant. There were highly vigorous trees some of which grew 6 feet tall in one year. One tree produced an average of 9 nuts per burr. This wide variation was a hint of the very fluid nature of the hybrid chestnuts. What I didn’t understand at the time was the remarkable chestnut blight disease and its great destructive power. Because it was not found on my farm due to my treeless isolation, I was living a dream chestnut life free of disease. Eventually the blight blew in and found the perfect host tree: my hybrid American chestnuts. Trying to navigate it or prevent it was impossible.  I gave up. I was overwhelmed and so were my inbetweeners. Most of the mature trees died within a 2-4 year time frame. I began new plantings using specific seedlings within the blight filled areas at my farm. It was my ‘Hail Mary’ moment.

BELOW IMAGE: This super laden hybrid American chestnut pictured below with artichokes in the foreground was a causality. After this massive crop, the tree died completely.

 

Douglas Hybrid American Chestnut Selection with very high yields. Clearwater Jerusalem Artichokes

With the help of a neighboring farmer’s brother who owned a mill, I began harvesting the wood and had much of it milled into fine lumber. I let everything go and encouraged natural seeding from both the new and old trees in the plantings. The seedling trees left had a much faster turn around rate. From infection to death was increasingly apparent on smaller caliper trees. This quick turn around improved the selection process dramatically and allowed me to manage the planting in a more streamlined and effective way without huge loss.

Letting go is the solution not intensive breeding.The population smooths out over time and a portion of the immunity remains in its wake. The inbetweeners become new species. New seed sources are discovered along with the addition of greater biodiversity of other food plants that grow in the shade of these tall upright trees. Directional pruning along with the addition of intentionally planted trees like honeylocust, plums and mulberries helped with the design initiatives of my farm fulfilling the missions of ecology, conservation, agriculture through J.Russel Smith’s Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture. This happened all because of a tiny little fungal disease improving the resilience of my farm and the plants that inhabit it.

Call it whatever you want. Castanea iluvumanii.

Douglas Hybrid American Chestnut

I didn’t mow or remove brush or fallen limbs. Many blackberries grew in those locations as the grass faded away and the birds used the dead limbs for roosting. Soon you could see seedlings of apples, pears, cornelian cherries, walnuts, multiflora rose and shellbark hickories seeding in these areas with the fading chestnuts. Once I did that, the inbetween solution came forward in ever greater numbers of strong growing, highly resistant trees with very vigorous strong timber like growth while at the same time increasing the biodiversity of my plantings. Many of the trees that are now gracing my farm are the result of this population expansion into the hybrid swarm that produces an intermediate “species”. This resistance becomes apparent in successive generations and skips through the long wait time needed in the past. The disease becomes weaker with time and the trees stronger. The blight also morphs into a weaker form of blight, and the trees find a way around it through callus formation. The callus formation makes it possible for the trees to continue their life into maturity and fruit continuously even after infection. It is not zero but nothing in the world is for plants. The disease provides an avenue for increased health and vigor of the new species.

The inbetweeners are a powerful message of tree salvation amidst real world problems.

Douglas Hybrid American Chestnut in flower

The inbetweeners find new ecological avenues for expression in a world of division where everything is one or the other. Now one is two blended as a whole.

Douglas Hybrid American Chestnut and employees at the Oikos Tree Crops farm

Agroforestry, Pollarding and Coppice Production:

Pollarding the trunk is a great agroforestry idea. If you cut down a hybrid chestnut, a dense head of branches will follow as sprouts soon fill the trunk area. The sprouts grow up to eight feet in a single year. The results vary dramatically from tree to tree. I noticed many heavy sprouters were damaged by chestnut blight barely making it past a second cutting. Eventually the main root system faded entirely with nothing to feed it. That was a big problem and quite common at my farm where the whole system would collapse. It produced completely unusable coppice for furniture making and wood working. Chestnut wood is very soft and has a hardness of basswood. The fast growth rate in the sprouts in the beginning is amazing yet the chestnut is not the willow in this management system.

“Pollard One” Excellent pollard selection defined by strong sprouting and strong resistance to chestnut blight. Combines fast growth, numerous sprouts at the base of the tree and long life due to disease resistance. Selected from a group of Douglas hybrid chestnuts, Pollard One is very precocious in flowering with a strong upright growth habit with minimal branching. Originally four seedlings were planted in this area that showed heavy flowering at an early age. Nut production has not been evaluated at this time. The root collar is very prone to sprouting all of which make it past 5 year mark completely without blight infection. “Pollard One” would have to be rooted to reproduce this characteristic for use in coppice production. The soil in this area is almost pure sand and stone yet the vigor is apparent in the plant without fertilizer or management in some way to speed the growth rate.

“Pollard One” American Hybrid Chestnut is one of a very few seedlings that show both great sprouting ability and high resistance to chestnut blight. A portion of the sprouts will be harvested in the dormant stage, dried and used in furniture making. The dead trunk in the middle will be removed in the process which will increase the straightness of the sprouts. The sprouts are dense enough to prevent branch formation and long enough to get 2-3 poles per cutting. This is the ideal method for my use and may be different depending on what the grower is trying to achieve.

Hybrid American Chestnut lumber milled from the Douglas Hybrid Chestnuts
Viva American Hybrid Chestnut seedling selected from a hybrid American population. This one produced incredibly vigorous seedlings but low yields of nuts.
Douglas Hybrid American Chestnut Pyramidal seed source used at the nursery.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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