How Deep Do Your Roots Go

Posted on June 4, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment
Bitternt hickory near my old high school

When I first started my nursery and began hand harvesting field grown trees, I knew I was going to need a variety of tools for the job. One of the shovels I purchased from Hawken Tools was manufactured by the Bulldog Company in the U.K. It was specifically designed for digging trees and cutting roots. It was a long, narrow and curved shovel with a D handle. It was the most expensive shovel I had ever purchased as well as the most durable. I still have it today. It was like a drain spade but much more robust in construction. I could put a razor sharp edge on it which would allow me to cut the roots easily when digging plus it was built to allow prying of the tree upwards. Once I was harvesting persimmon trees, I noticed a small pignut hickory had seeded in the nursery bed which was near the road about fifty feet away. I began to dig it up and found my shovel had hung up on it so I started to pull realizing I had loosened the long root to the point I was able to bring it all up. It was a three inch seedling tree with a six foot root. It was a one year old tree. Hickory is not produced by the nursery industry because of its tap root. Tap rooted trees are not considered desirable for most production systems and difficult and slow to produce. This is one of the main reasons you don’t see hickory grown as shade trees. If you prune the root, it produces another tap root or sometimes 2-3 tap roots from the cut area. In the meantime, I was beginning to think about my little tap rooted friend and realized the parent trees which were 50 ft. tall must have immense depth to them. How far down would the roots go and when would they stop? The straight math says 1200 feet. It was weird in that the lower portion of this taproot was rather succulent and almost translucent. As I pulled it up, you could feel the pressure created by the soil around it as if it was connected to the soil via a pressurized media. There was no side branching or hair roots. Just a tap root going straight down. The depth of hickory roots was always in the back of my mind and over the years I began to ask others about it. What is the depth of a mature hickory tree? When would the roots end? I found a tree company that moves large pecans which is in the Carya genus. The roots in this pecan case go down around twenty feet or so and then hit a clay subsoil so thick that they cannot penetrate it. This makes it possible to move larger pecans in an orchard environment to their permanent location. It thins the orchard in the process and there is less waste of trees too. It turns out this clay subsoil is really the cutting off point. When I was having my well drilled, it turned out I too had a clay subsoil at 30 feet down. However my subsoil was filled with rock and coarse sand and was a loose aggregate. So it would mean that likely the hickory tree could potentially go through that if it wanted to and keep going. From there at roughly 110 feet is more or less a sandy rich soil filled with water. At that point the well pump is installed because the water column is substantial. However, a hickory root could potentially pass through that too. As long there is some dissolved oxygen, the trees roots could keep going. But would they? There is no reason to stop really if there is no physical barrier. So I asked the well driller what is below the water table. He said that in this area he was not aware of bedrock or impermeable sandstone and wasn’t sure of the depth. He told me once someone was putting in an industrial well of some sort in the nearby town and went to 1000 feet before the drill bit got hung up on something. They could not pull up the drill. It turned out they had hit an underground river forcing the drill bit to the side from the force of the water movement. Once they got it up, they took samples and found them similar in profile to Lake Superior water. I found that very interesting. So now I think I found the end of my hickory root. It taps into the waters of Lake Superior feeding its leaves with the pure waters of the great lake several hundred miles away. Even to this day, I wonder if the story is true and if the roots would go that deep. Yet every time I dig a hickory tree I do have the thought, how deep do you go my little friend. The answer comes back immediately. “Farther than you know my little friend” said the hickory tree. “Farther than you know.”

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Oh, it’s vigorous

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

There is probably no other word used more freely than vigorous to describe a desirable attribute of a plant found in cultivation. Here are a few plants that show their vigorous nature no matter what nature throws at them. This vigorous nature translates to higher yields, faster growth as well as long term health.

Purple Ease Potato

Potatoes are not thought of as vigorous. How are your potatoes? Vigorous? What kind of question is that? Yet vigorous can happen. Purple Ease does that effortlessly. As of May 31, the plants are already three foot tall and have huge leaves. It is this vigorous growth that greatly increases the potato yields. Foliage health and strong square stems help this along to bring both fruit production for seed and heavy tuber production.

Ashe Magnolia

I was more than a little surprised this Florida native can grow in Michigan let alone be actually vigorous and healthy. I lost many of its macrophylla cousins over the last thirty years. The heat and wind and took them out completely. I found a forgotten plant recently surviving under an amur maackia honeysuckle colony out back where it is now slowly making its way to the bur oak canopy in that area. . Each leave is perfectly aligned with the sun to capture the maximum light which only adds to its vigor. The thick green leaves up to two foot long stay a rich green color even through a dry summer.

Big Hip Rose Almost all species roses are vigorous. They are grown from seed. There is no graft union and no issue with the innumerable species of insects that feed on the foliage which inevitably reduces vigor. Once the canes fruit for several years, they will begin to fail. Vigor kicks in and new sprouts can grow five feet in a season starting from the base of the plant. A small bud will quickly throw a sprout called a sucker. The sucker fruits in two years as the cane matures and produces branches and then flower buds.

Thicket Bean There are few beans that can grow forty feet in a single season. The thicket bean can easily do this. It is interesting to watch this vine produce so much foliage in a season. A wild species and crop relative can be cultivated. Under ideal conditions, its true potential is revealed with the production of huge volumes of foliage and flowers. People tend to fear vines. It is a force of nature that you cannot control. For some, it’s too much drama. But without it, there are few beans. Vigor equals beans.

I want to live in a world where beans fall from the sky. It would be a sign of a vigorous and healthy world.

Ashe magnolia flower
Vigorous chestnut sprout
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A Gap in the Field

Posted on May 30, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

My father and his friend and business partner purchased a 400 acre Christmas tree farm in the early 70’s that needed a lot of work. One area that was previously harvested was filled with thick grass and dense woody shrubs that had seeded in around the previous Christmas trees. It contained a thousand tree stumps per acre that had to go. To prepare this area for new Christmas tree seedlings, the solution was to get out the plow. The field needed to be reduced to pure flat soil. The reality was the Christmas tree roots were shallow, dense and intertwined preventing penetration by the plow. When a rotovator was attempted, it too barely made a dent into the soft sandy soil eventually breaking and putting it in the shop for repairs. Finally a bulldozer was brought in and what was left was a type of moonscape filled with roots, ruts and crushed vegetation. Now the field will lie fallow until next spring when it will be planted again to start the ten year cycle.

Despite the tragic soil conditions, I had the thought of planting potatoes in these open gaps where the soil was mostly pure sand. In my mind, the field was just sitting there not doing anything. To me, that seemed like a crime but also a challenge. There were mounds of soil created in the destruction process. I had the thought they looked like potato hills that people create when growing potatoes. Armed with a sense of curiosity with zero knowledge of potatoes, I purchased seed potatoes from a local hardware store and drove my mom’s Schwinn bike out to the farm on a sunny Sunday afternoon fourteen miles away. The seats on those bicycles are very comfortable but the single speed was slow. The planting was more like ‘plopping-in’ than actual digging. I realized that the mix of soil and subsoil along with the damage done by the heavy equipment was even more severe than I thought. As most gardeners know, eternal optimism is everything. What could go wrong? Nothing.

This moonscape that we created at our farm was a gap of vegetation. It was surrounded by a lush ditch filled with cattails on one side and an oak forest on the other. It was a stark contrast of life and death. Here was an area filled with remnants of its previous life and exposed soil. I viewed it as a possibility of a new crop plant to try. It was a shout out to a new food possibility. What I didn’t realize was nitrogen draft from the existing vegetation, the previous use of herbicide sprays used to prevent weed growth and the effects of heavy equipment on the soil profile made this possibility or idea less likely to come to fruition. I only saw the possibility.

Today I look for these gaps and find many of them in my fields and beyond. Some are of more natural origin and some are found in manicured landscapes. I am tempted to plant tomatoes in some of these highly manicured commercial landscapes. Unfortunately, when I have done that, the companies that manage them yank them out. It doesn’t fit into that gap due to human intervention. Once in a while I am tempted to plant seeds into the land conservancy land. But this might create a cascade of negative consequences of which would defeat the purpose of doing it in the first place so I have never tried it. Now I focus on gaps in my open field conditions created by other plants or other unknown changes in the soil itself creating a certain blank spot amidst the vegetation. It is these blank spots that make it possible to grow potatoes and other fruiting plants. Not just any potato will grow. It has to be adapted to those conditions and still be productive over time like any wild plant. It was not that hard to accomplish because the gap was there ready to accept the plant. The gap is nothing yet provides the opportunity to make it happen. All you add is the seed. I find that reassuring that it can be done once you meet nature on that level where the plant thrives with little human intervention. Certainly the yields may be less or the crop itself will change in some way that is unpredictable. But that in itself is good because now the plant can reproduce in this new environmental scenario.

What happened to my potatoes in the Christmas tree field? They disappeared entirely. Only the small dead stems were left by the time I got there in August. They were hard to find. I harvested what I could. It was barely more than I planted. They were very small only an inch in diameter. I took them home and cooked them. They were delicious. I will try again. Now that I know the gap, I see gaps everywhere I go.

One of last remaining plants in this Christmas tree field is horse nettle. It is resistant to a lot of herbicides.
This particular potato has immunity to virus as well is able to survive outdoors and regenerate on its own without replanting. When I start a planting, I let it go for at least five years to test for persistence in field conditions.
There are seven different species of Veronica in Michigan. Called Speedwell, it is one of the few species of plants similar to the fern called Ebony spleenwort on the lower right to grow in areas where other plants begin to thin and die out over time.

This is the gap created by Speedwell. It tends to grow where everything else is pretty much gone. I am not sure if the plant produces a certain alleopathic effect or if it is just seeding in these areas with oak and apple leaves. This is one of the best groundcovers because it is so easy to harvest on it plus there is no need for mowing or weed whacking prior to harvest. The idea is to have level flat areas so when the nuts fall it is easy to find them and collect. This plant is also evergreen which is an ecological advantage if there is other competing grasses. Speedwell is the gap.

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There is No Substitute

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

Every now and then I find an article that tries to connect in some way a little known crop plant to a major crop in modern agriculture. I think it is only natural to do that. I see it more and more. The connections try to reel you in to the similarities of your love of potatoes or some other delicious food plant that has been cultivated thousands of years and a wild relative or native plant of some type. I’m pretty sure the authors have never eaten these and for sure they have never grown them. It’s obvious. The differences are great in flavor, composition, digestibility, nutrition as well as the horticultural implications. Almost always they gloss over those. Recently an article in Modern Farming highlights the use of native plants as a substitute for common food plants. What the authors don’t realize is they are driving a wedge into these crops separating them farther away from ‘normal’ crops. Nettles are not like spinach. Jerusalem artichokes are not potatoes. And nor will they ever be like them anymore than fiddlehead ferns are the new asparagus or ramps are the new onions.

Sometimes highlighting differences is the key to success in marketing new crops. There are certain characteristics you don’t want ‘dumb-downed’ as well as potential health benefits of the new crops and the unique flavor profiles found in these crops. If you decide to attach it to a category like native, you have put it in a niche market which I think of as the market of death. I know it seems strong but it is so true. It becomes isolated to the point few people see it and fewer people buy it. It takes some time, but it eventually dies out over time while you are feverishly trying to resuscitate it every year looking for new avenues of sales. The description itself becomes weaker over time as the definition becomes even more vague. Native today has attached to itself herbicide usage and burning increasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with the removable of invasive species. Do you want your new crop plant associated with these practices? It may not matter to you in the grand scheme of things but you have to think about the trends and why the organic market continues to out grow all other sectors of agriculture. To me, I don’t want herbicides dragged into natural areas where people are foraging for these wild crops. It is not healthy for the humans or the plants.

The use of native-indigenous North American plants as a new crop plant is not better than other crops. You are free to think of it any way you want. There is no crime in that even if you paint a fake picture of ecology and agriculture. It would be ideal to let the crop speak for itself in terms of its flavor and acceptability to the public at large and foster that connection. That native plant is a good crop plant just as the sunflower is. Over time the plants become native and integrate into the whole of agriculture. This too is normal and part of the 5000 year history of agriculture. Join now. Its both modern and farming.

Less sting stinging nettles. A selection found on my farm. No it doesn’t taste like spinach.

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Pine Nut Ecology and Economy

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

Pine nuts are expensive. You just can’t grab a handful to chow down without thinking there goes five dollars. I know they are saved for sprinkling on salads or making pesto. There they sit on the same shelf as the butter in a clear plastic snap tray like contraption. I see the price sticker on it clearly displayed. Frankly, I want a popcorn sized bowl of those rich oily smooth textured nuts. I want to roast them and eat them like peanuts while watching Ancient Aliens. Now we’re talking. Yet I realize I am forbidden from doing this. Never mind Ancient Aliens. I would need a second job to pay off my pine nut obsession. It has passed the macadamia nut level.

When I first started growing nut trees, I immediately began my pine nut quest. I wanted to solve that problem quickly. I grew many species over the course of three decades. Pine seeds are readily available as species from seed companies as well as within the confines of the arboretums who had mini-pinetums within them. One of my sources was Dean Swift Seed Company where you could order fresh out of the cone pine nuts, Pinus edulis, from as far north as Colorado. If you come to my farm today, you may ask where are your pine nut trees? You don’t see the trees or the carnage. The answer was simple. The alpine environment is not in southern Michigan. It is not the same ecology as the mountain ranges of Afghanistan, Italy or the arboreal regions of Siberia where many nut pines exist in the wild. This is the same reason you see Douglas fir trees fail barely getting to fruiting size. It is too humid here in southern Michigan in both soil and atmosphere. How many thousands of pinyon pines have to die before I give up trying to create a pine nut forest? The answer was over ten thousand. I did get one to flower though before finally saying farewell. It made a cone with no nuts. Even direct seeding into an area of my farm into pure sand did not work. That is not alpine. That was fake alpine. They knew. It only took three years.

Scherwin Pine Cones – Himalayan x Eastern White Pine Cross

Today I have numerous mature Korean pine trees scattered around my farm. This has become my pine nut forest. This tree is adapted to Michigan and produces pine nuts. I have several surrounding my barn too. Many are just starting to flower and fruit after twenty five years. I have several in my outback area where I limbed them upwards and wait for the cones to form. Some of my seedlings came from the legendary Grant Mudge planting in northern Michigan. This was the largest planting of Korean pine nuts in the United States for a while. It was a small row of trees on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. It takes about two years to sprout the seeds. A lot of other things love pine nuts too and you have to protect them in screened propagation trays as you await their sprouting.

Korean Pine Nut Cones and Seeds

What I find interesting in the breeding and selection of pine nuts are the hybrids of white pine, Pinus strobus. The Himalayan white pine, Pinus griffithi is only marginally hardy here yet despite its propensity to disease and winter burn on the needles I did find a few seedling types that show promise as a nut pine. It appears the hybrids produce large amounts of cones. They hybridize with the white pine and potentially could cross with the Korean pine nut. This could help in creating a diverse progeny to make selections from as well as create a population of fruitful and highly productive orchard type trees all with thin shells. One in particular from Germany has huge crops of cones some of which are almost a foot long. I collected a couple of bushels last year and ran them in my seed processor thinking they were rich in progeny and genetic variation. Unfortunately, all the seeds were blanks. If you look under the parent tree, you do see some seedlings popping up here and there. I am moving some of these closer to the Korean nut pines in an attempt to set cones of a hybrid origin. Its a dream I will keep alive but only because I love pine nuts and nothing else.

It would take a little breeding or selection but it could be done. It turns out that others have found the Korean pine nut easily cultivated but the shells are quite thick. There are some varieties with thinner shells as well as larger seeds too. This might not matter in terms of cracking and processing technology but if you combine it with a high yielding cone as well as a larger seed then it is possible to move that forward much faster. It would be the pistachio of nut pines in many ways with a paper thin shell of Pinus edulis but the ability to grow in a variety of climates outside of the world of mountains and minus fifty on the fringe of the artic world of permafrost.

I kind of get the feeling that pine nuts need to be employed at a large scale to make it worthwhile. You need abandoned land that even jack pine has worn out its welcome. You need quantities of seedlings produced from its native Korean range. Having a means to establish the trees and monitor their growth would be helpful. A thousand acres would be enough. This would create a repository large enough to judge the nut pine as a nut producer in the world dominated by jack and red pine. It would be tough to get your foot in the door but it is possible. A pine forest is not something new. Those the world has known for hundreds of years. A pine nut forest is something new. It would be a calorie full rich forest filled with delicious goodness. That is a forest we would all want to live in. I would move there if I could. There I would eat bowls of pine nuts and watch Ancient Mysteries of the Unknown Aliens while snacking my way to pine nut nirvana.

Schwerin pine bark
Schwerin pine trunk and limbs

Schwerin Pine Pinus strobus x wallichiana The origin of this pine traces back to the estate of Dr. Graf von Schwerin in 1905 just outside of Berlin. He was a resistance fighter against the Nazis in Germany. He was put to death after implications of his involvement to assassinate Hitler. The pine discovery was a seedling found in his garden as an accidental cross of the Himalayan white pine and the Eastern white pine. I was fortunate to get seed of the original tree and have only one tree of it today. I have grown many other white pines from Mexico, southwestern U.S., Austria and unknown seedlings here in Michigan. Some of these have done very well here but cone production is low so far.

Schwerin pine is a cross with the Himalayan white and the North American white pine usually produced by grafting. It will back cross with other five needled white pines but no one knows the extent of this. The tree is fertile and does produce some seedlings but most of the seeds are blanks. Last year I collected a couple bushels of cones only to find there appear to no viable seeds in the lot. I am not throwing out the seeds because it appears there is a one percent chance of fertile seed in the lot. One seedling I grew made it to four feet in three years despite being hammered on by deer. That is a good sign for hybrid vigor as well as fruiting at a young age. The Schwerin pine would be a good bridge for producing this nut pine with thin shells and heavy production. One seed is enough. I will move some of these hybrids near my mature Korean nut pines in an attempt to naturally cross them.

Schwerin pine-Here you notice the broad lateral branches which is more typical of species pines with good cone production. This area is filled with hybrid bur oaks, hicans, Caragana and Iowa blackhaw viburnum. I’m not sure how the yuccas got there but roughly about 200 feet away is my yucca stand.
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What Are Our Plan(t)s For the Next Thousand Years

Posted on May 17, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

When I was teenager my first job was a janitor. My postal career dad took on a second job at our church of which I helped every weekend on Saturday. When you got there in the morning, you always checked the list of the daily chores. The list sat on a desk in the boiler room in the church basement illuminated by a single lamp. It was like it was a precious document in a museum. Amongst the parts of the boiler, tools and bottles, the list spoke to you and told you what was needed to be done in the church. The list was in all caps written in pencil. The list was based on the current use of the building plus what could happen at any moment in the life of the congregation. Since my dad was the creator of the list as the maintainer of the building, people came to him with all types of requests. Since he had the keys he had to ‘open up’ and ‘close’, he needed a second car which is why I always thought he purchased this used sports car. Because lets face it nothing says church janitor like Triumph Spitfire.

Mom and Dad enjoying the sports car moment in Saginaw, Michigan.

Sometimes I wish we had multi-generational lists. A list that propels us through the improvements in technology and science would be nice. In the environmental sciences, it seems hit or miss to me. We are constantly cleaning up after ourselves but we cannot seem to plan or plant long term. Tree crops take time and space to work. Some ideas are only effective if done on a larger scale. This is needed for many tree crops. It is not just another apple orchard. You need long term solutions with a type of stick-to-it mentality so a whole system of connections between plants, people and industry are forged. For the person growing and tending the system, it needs to be profitable. Pecans are probably one of the few tree crops like this today where from seedling to selection to orchard can take decades.

Bamboo is one of those crops that could usher in a new tree crop era. It could solve a huge number of environmental problems all at once addressing carbon sequestration, food, plastics and building materials. Once established the plantations could last generations while growing on marginal farmland. Yet why are we so timid on bamboo? Fear. Its a powerful plant with huge potential. We really have no clue how to manage and use it. Today we only know bamboo as an ornamental plant. People use them as a screen plant or a clumping grass plant for its foliage. There are grasses too that fit into the bamboo category but the true bamboo is like no other in terms of its growth and power. Ironically this is what concerns people when you mention bamboo. They freak.

In tune with my nursery goals, my interest in bamboo was to develop the edible sprout bamboo for a zone 6 location. I wanted to use a runner type bamboo and work with seedlings all genetically different. I assembled two types of native bamboo to North America as well. When winter came and went several times, I was surprised at the variation as well as the unfortunate loss of most of my collection. It was a good loss as now I had a practical application to my germplasm. You see all the different root structures, the ability to spread laterally, the hardiness as well as the ability to regrow after a tough winter. This all plays into growing bamboo. You have to treat it like grass. And wow what a grass it is. It’s easy to get lost in bamboo. You need to know how fast does it regenerate after cutting just like a hay field. What is the yield? How does it compare to other grasses?

Bamboo is a tree crop and one likely will come into play once we learn how to tend it and make friends with other cultures who understand its importance and use. That in itself is multi-generational so it is good we are starting now. The end goal is how can we make a resource rich environment filled with new plants and new plans for the future. In the end, we can live a little and buy a sportscar of sorts to get us to and from opening and closing.

Bamboo-Phyllostachys edulis

Phyllostachys edulis Year number 6 shows the plants developing larger caliper canes.
Trees and bamboo are not mutually exclusive.

Towards Selecting Bamboo as a Tree Crop

There is nothing new under the sun in bamboo. When I started selecting and growing seedlings of bamboo I was surprised of the genetic variation in terms of hardiness and fast growth. If you listen to those who are experts in bamboo, they will tell you over and over that only the runner types are worth growing for their vigor and health for this purpose. This species edulis produces a delicious sprout. Another species, I was able to grow was called Vivax or Chinese timber bamboo. It produced some hardy seedlings but most were not acclimated to Michigan’s winters compared to edulis. If you grow a lot of seedlings, it is difficult to see the variability in the progeny until the third or fourth year. From there you can then make plantings to test further for hardiness and of course fast growth. Fast growth may not be apparent until the root is well established after eight years or more. This year the sprouts have grown to ten feet in less than a months time.

The indigenous North American species are the greatest spreaders here growing a shallow rhizome outward usually in a single line before branching. Over a 20 year period the plants have moved away from their original planting averaging a foot a year in an omni-directional pattern. They have also remained the most evergreen in the foliage department. One selection seems to spread more than the other and one flowers consistently producing mostly blank seeds. It does not die after flowering.

Bamboo selections need further evaluation in a larger area to really put them to the test. I would say this is on par with black locust in many ways. You really are creating a giant colony that could live for hundreds of years. That is the bamboo. Put it on the list.

Grass test area. Testing. Testing. 1.2.3 Three species of bamboo, sedge, gamma grass.
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That Buckeye Biogas Dilemma

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

I got a call a few years ago from someone working on biofuel production. I think he lived in Spain if I remember correctly. He was doing a research project specifically related to Aesculus, the horsechestnut genus, and its possibility of growing it as a source for the production of biofuels. After my mental confusion settled, I was not quite sure how that would work in the world of corn. Is that practical? Why buckeyes of all things? Since that call, I began to think of ways that could make that work. It kind of drove me nuts in a conker sort of way. I had this childhood memory of throwing buckeye nuts great distances. The conkers would fit perfectly in our hands and we would throw them as far and as high as we could. In my particular geographical location, there was no natural rock in the fields so they had the perfect size and weight ratio. I was having flashbacks of these two polar opposite experiences every time I saw a buckeye tree.

Conkers-Yellow buckeye nuts
Yellow buckeye Aesculus octandra

From a selection standpoint, the first thing I thought about was yields and breeding. For a while, I would go around and look at my plantings or street trees and go, ‘oh, that’s a gassy one.’ The whole thing was based on what I saw in nature thinking I could do better. Somehow I would find a magic buckeye with major gas. That was my secret goal. However, I really loved the genus and its rich diversity. I grew as many as I could find including the massive California and the fast growing Japanese species. There were many hybrids and soon I began to see a pattern. All those flowers you see on a buckeye tree do not produce nuts. It is a very small part of the raceme that actually fruits and produces nuts. It made me wonder why. Another aspect of it came to mind when I visited towns throughout Michigan on my vacations and would spot some very nice trees growing in the northern portions of the state with excellent health. Not so much in the southern part as a foliar disease called leaf scorch would weaken the trees and drop the leaves in August. For the buckeye just getting and maintaining leaves is critical if its going to be a good nut producer for gas.

Yellow buckeye

I kind of forgot about this biofuel possibility until a few years ago while doing a sort of look see at one of my seedling plantings and discovered some amazing trees with heavy production like I have never seen before. This particular planting was done by luck. While shipping some packages at a local post office I noticed a very straight tall buckeye tree in the back of the building. The folks at the post office let me harvest them which I planted at my farm. In general, buckeyes are rarely planted as ornamental trees today. There are some very nice selections of them from a floral standpoint. But the species types are not considered something people desire from a horticultural standpoint. As a result I ended up with a lot of trees no one wanted. I did notice some growth rate differences and kept the most vigorous trees with strong growth with no leaf scorch.

Ohio buckeye Aesculus glabra

I was shocked at the yields from the seedlings of the postal tree. One of the trees now 20 ft. tall bent to the ground with its yields of nuts. Maybe that is truly a gassy one. Today it does not matter if buckeyes or any other perennial crop produces biofuels because priorities have shifted as other forms of energy have come into play. The corn thing is tight making conkers impractical. But it does pave a way to a future for trees as a perennial crop useful for a sort of above ground petroleum derivative. This tree has a resource that may contain something that will diminish our need for fossil fuels or we could use them for medicine or for the manufacture of biodegradeable products of some type. This is the point. What is the potential end use of that resource? Is is something practical and if put into production how would that roll out from a financial standpoint. Could a farmer actually have a buckeye orchard? Can you make a sweater from it? Can you produce a cup or toothbrush? Is there such thing as a conker laden cell phone protective cover or a bumper on a truck? Does it cure cancer? Is it gassy? I don’t know but I like to think about it. I would hurl that idea like a conker a great distance just as someone did for me from Spain which hit me right in the noggin. I’ve never been the same since.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

Red buckeye Aesculus pavia
Yellow buckeye canopy-One of the best air conditioners.
Ohio buckeye bark mosaic
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The Laws of Nature Are Flexible But Not in Mattawan

Posted on May 11, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

I do not have a personal connection of any magnitude to what goes on in the making of laws or an influencer in any way in my chosen profession or in my normal life. I am a follower. I am the guy who refuses to park in no parking zones even in off hours. I am not sure if it was my Lutheran upbringing that made me this way. Once while visiting my girlfriend (now my wife) who lived about twenty miles away, I would drive through the town of Mattawan, Michigan. It was a very small town in the late 70’s. There were no stop lights and you could drive straight through to the highway. Mattawan has a steep hill on it and it was quite a speed trap going north. I was heading south which was straight uphill. It was just after midnight and someone was going extremely slow in front of me. I needed to pass. It was late. I put my left blinker on and gunned it which put me at thirty miles an hour. As I glanced to my right, I noticed it was a police car. Whoopsie. Well no turning back now. Then I realized another car was in front of him and there was no room to squeeze between the two of them. I continued with my pass. Once again I glanced to my right only to realize it too was a police car. It was too late now. As the lights went off behind me, I immediately tried to figure out what I did wrong. I used my turn signals. One of the officers was very upset for some reason. He wanted to know what sort of shenanigans I was up to. He asked to look into my trunk. Why not? I’m Lutheran. When he opened the trunk, you could see his eyes light up with anger. I had firewood in my trunk. It was a Chevy Nova so not a surprise and thanks to my dad, a huge stack of Scientific Americans and National Geographics. It was like a granola mixture of wood and knowledge back there. Hey, everyone uses their car in Michigan to haul firewood and pertinent scientific literature. Right? The whole thing was going south after the trunk incident. Finally, after some time, they let me go home without a ticket. As time went on the hill in Mattawan became a legend. My customers, my parents, my employees all got pulled over and issued speeding tickets. We would warn people about this on a map we would send people in the mail when they picking up plants from my farm. The laws were not very flexible there and seemed a bit unfair. So it was in Mattawan.

Nature on the other hand has a whole different level of employment of laws. You can violate them all and appear completely immune to violations. You can speed down that hill at a hundred miles an hour and nothing will happen. You may not notice your errors until much later if at all. You can do things that can bring down a whole nation like build an atom bomb or damage the food system in an irreversible way for generations to come like GMO foods. Such is the case for trying to use fragments of scientific knowledge to live more in accord with the laws of nature. It is not like gravity or some other obvious effect. It is much more subtle and beyond our comprehension because it is so complex. Even if we knew all of the laws, we would likely just sit in our house afraid to go outside and violate any law. Yes. We would become super Lutherans. Just poking fun at myself.

In the beginning of my nursery, I used a popular weed killer. I was told it was safe. I was not happy with that answer so I contacted a soil expert who was very familiar with soil remediation and how to reverse bad things that happen to good soil. He suggested a tank mix of humates when I sprayed. The humates are a naturally occurring form of humic acid which is said to increase biological activity in the soil as well as aid in breakdown of materials both organic and non-organic in the soil. It was like a concentrated form of compost tea. I used his form of humates because they were better than the ionized versions. They actually dissolved in water. I was not sure this was true either, but I accepted it as a means to solve a problem I was creating by using this toxic well known weed killer. Even today, I am not sure it worked. But for sure there were other negative consequences of my actions including amphibian deaths, micro nutrient effects and shared toxicity of non-target plants in my plantings. I also became more conscious of my own health too. I finally quit this and found other ways to do the same with less effort and cost. The plants grew even more vigorously with support of these new laws of nature which focused on soil and plant health. Everything benefited and thrived including me.

Every now and then I have the thought, how could I be so stupid not to see this? Well I didn’t see it. That was the issue, ignorance. But then is ignorance an excuse for violating the law? No. But then I am not going to buy a red Ferrarri and head north at hundred miles an hour through the town of Mattawan flipping the bird to the police officers at the bottom of the hill hoping I don’t get pulled over just to see what happens. I know those laws.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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It is A Good Beech On A Shore of A Great Lake

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

When I started my business, I really made use of a Pentax camera my parents bought me when I graduated from college in 1979. It was a perfect gift for me. As a recommendation of a high school friend of mine who was a fabulous photographer, I began using the Kodachrome 64 slide film. It was such a joy for me to capture nature in a way that I experienced first hand. It worked. Like taking a hike on the Lake Michigan shoreline, you never know what you will find. On another level using the images for my business, I had no idea that people would critique them related to botany and taxonomy. Not F-stop, shutter speed or focus critique. The American beech image above was taken on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. I used it for a catalog cover in the 80’s which was sent out to my mailing list of a few thousand people. It was one of my first full color catalog covers. There was one person who seemed desperate to tell me that this was not beech because beech has a smooth bark. I tried to tell him that the wind coming off the lake and the location created this effect and that some beech trees have very unique bark patterns. There is variation. Because he only saw beeches a certain way, there was no way to convince him otherwise no matter what I said. I was kind of shocked he had that much disbelief and really was convinced I was wrong. Little did I know this type of belief system related to plants became more pronounced as time went on and images were more freely available on line far greater than botanical books and literature could provide. You would think it would be less. Today each plant has its own Wikipedia page and is highlighted by numerous botanical institutions. Frankly, I like that. It is amazing we have come so far identifying and enjoying nature in all its infinite glory. But maybe that is the problem. The operative word here is “infinite”. People like nice tidy categories not broad expanses of the universe of plants.

Yet, I’m here to say the botanical critics are alive and well today. Almost always they are wrong and misleading with some more than others. But you cannot say that. The terminology used to label invasive plants is off the charts wrong. But you cannot speak up and expect someone to listen. I am not talking about mislabeling of a plant in the greenhouses or customer service issue. Starting in the 90’s I started to use the luke warm and nice response,”I will acknowledge but not confirm or deny your view” philosophy. It was really a huge waste of time to try to change someone’s mind. Sometimes the emails were long winded and highly detailed. Sometimes it was a letter in the mail box written in pencil. Either way I was happy they reached out to me and responded in some way. Personally, I thought it was always better to assume I was wrong and willing to check it out. Nature is infinite and you never know what you will find. It’s a good thing to know how people feel on an emotional level. But I would never respond in a way that said “you are completely wrong (or nuts) and here is why”. Never that. But sometimes it was tempting. I remember thinking on one of the letters that the individual writing this was using information from her peers. This was her confirmation of sorts of her knowledge of plants. Could she abandon that easily? I don’t think so.

It taught me a valuable lesson that our understanding of nature is shaped by what we read, what we understand and more importantly what we believe.

And please don’t etch that into the beautiful smooth beech bark.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus

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Who Art Thou Number 909?

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Biologicalenrichment

When I first starting growing oaks in bulk for the conservation and mail order trade I was always on the look out for acorns. It was by luck that I took a wrong turn on a road I had never been down before and found a strip of English and pin oaks along a quiet neighborhood road near a middle school. For some reason someone decided to alternate the two trees in the curb lawn. I used this as a source of acorns for a while and told another nursery person about it. It turned out that this seed source like all of the English oaks including the columnar ones were not the most adapted tree for the Michigan climate. It did have massive acorn production but it was very susceptible to mildew which reduced its life to under 25 years of age. For an oak tree, this was not good. Except for the pin oaks, these school curb lawn trees are now long gone, but it did start me on a path to find resistant and healthy trees in its population. Here is how that went down.

At my farm, I would plant in slightly raised seed beds and fill them with acorns. With a level flat headed rake and an aluminum landscape rake, I would create six rows in a four foot wide bed and then after tamping cover them in sawdust. Prior to planting I would super till the soil so it was extremely soft. I would then hand toss the sawdust over the beds covering them smoothly. Like powdered sugar on a cookie, I got pretty good at evenly tossing sawdust using a scoop shovel. As the trees grew for a few years, the mildew would eventually get worse and encase the leaves to the point they were completely white. This reduced the growth dramatically and weakened them to the point they would stop growing and die. This particular seed source was very bad plus it did not produce hybrids to any extent. Keep in mind the Red Group pin oaks would not cross with White Group English oaks despite them being next to each other. The distance is considered too far apart genetically. Or so I was told.

As time went on there was one seedling that stood out. It was less than one in two thousand in this particular bed. It was completely immune to mildew so its bright green foliage, fast growth and unique wide branching pattern made this tree jump out of the seed bed. I moved it about 100 feet away straight up a hillside in almost pure sand. It was from this location along with its Procera oak (robur x bicolor) cousin to continue its life uninterrupted. This was the beginning of the 909 oak with its forestry tag numerical identification.

909 Trunk

As time went on, I began pruning the tree and realized that the branch pattern matched a little of the pin oak. The branches went to a 45 degree lateral from the trunk and secondary branches hung down. The leaves were more elongated than the other hybrids I had. It did not produce acorns which was odd. Finally after twenty plus years a few acorns dropped and I grew those to see what the progeny was like. 909 did not disappoint as the seedlings were also immune to mildew and quite vigorous. They had pointy tips on the leaves like some of the red oaks too. I have yet to see acorns produced since then despite the possible crosses with nearby oaks of many species and hybrids.

909 Bark
909

I don’t think there is anything more I can do. I’m throwing in the towel. I pruned around it and will remove some of the dead lateral branches that are now too shaded. The tree continues its strong growth upwards and outward. Today I measured its girth and found it to have a two foot diameter trunk. The lack of acorns is likely beneficial in terms of its growth. There are many nearby oaks that could pollinate it but apparently don’t as I have not seen acorns again in twenty years. The off the chart trunk size and the growth habit make it an ideal oak from a clonal standpoint. It would be good if it was rooted. I would love to try that. It would good if it was named and propagated. 909 is not a particularly enticing name for any tree. What about “Bob”? It would be good as a shade or street tree existing in the curb lawn where few things flourish. Bob could make it happen. It would be good if I just enjoyed the tree and stop questioning its hybridity or anything related to its taxonomy. Classification is not joyful to begin with. It is not like ancestry.com and finding a long lost cousin. The mystery of not knowing is exciting and uplifting for me. It would be best if I did nothing. I would just enjoy the tree. That is what I will do then. I will explain it to others if they visit and show them the marvels of nine-oh-nine. That is it.

I would start the conversation with, “Hello 909. Meet……….”

Trillium near Bob.
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