Burenglish Oak Acorns Ecos Selections

currently unavailable One of the great joys of owning a nursery is to discover new sources of seeds. This was especially true with oaks. In growing out seedling oak trees you will find hybrids. There they are! What are our going to do?  Over time, gardeners have discovered these natural hybrids . Other than horticultural selections no one has really looked at the plants from a population level. That was my interest and as small as my farm is I was determined to make population level selections based on tree health, fast growth and acorn production. That did work but try explaining that to other nurseries. That did not work. In the meantime, one source of the burenglish oak was from abandoned arboretum plantings and another from street trees that were done about 60 years ago by a researcher. These were good trees but not super selected or bred. To me that is a treasure chest of genetic possibilities.  I purchased a lot of acorns from this group and kept only the strongest trees with no mildew and strong apical dominance with symmetrical branching. The acorns were planted in the worse soil I had at the farm which is best described as a sand hill. I really didn't take of them until they were 15 years old and then began pruning and removing weak trees. Over time, I found some amazing oaks from this group and when they started fruiting I was pleasantly surprised at the heavy yields.

Burenglish oak represents a form of hybrid oak perfect for its fast growth and possible timber production. The large leaves and strong growth habit even from seed represent a stabilized species. Further work could be done to make the population even faster growing. Some of the selections are more compact in this group. These have super heavy yields on them of very large acorns. Selections could easily be made just for acorn production, but for now I think the goal should be to set up further plantings of this wonderful cross to make it possible to spread to other farms as a supplement tree in agroforestry projects.