Ooti Oak-Bur Chinkapin Oak Hybrid Acorns-Scions

This was one of the first selections of oak that was produced at my farm for a low tannin acorn. The parent tree was in Illinois and was given to me from Ralph Krieder. I purchased a lot of seeds from Ralph and when I visited once he showed me this hybrid oak on his property. I began to produce it clonally in limited amounts. From there I added its seedlings to my planting as well as other similar crosses from Illinois and Michigan. For some reason this combination had both good flavor, texture and low tannin levels making it easier to process. 

Trees can easily be produced from seed of this cross and tend towards the middle of both chinkapin and bur oak. For years I grew many seedlings of chinkapin oak at my farm from trees in a park. What I found was there was little if any natural hybrids of it in the areas I was collecting. However after visiting a planting in Illinois you could definitely find some larger trees of this cross with the darker colored acorns and the typical bur oak fringed cap. It was much later that I found several of these more mature trees near the park I was collecting before and started growing out the seedlings and making some selections based on vigor and strong upright growth and symmetrical branching. These same trees are used as my seed source as they proven to be heavier yielding than chinkapin oak. 

"Ooti"  Ooti represents a chinkapin oak hybrid with low tannin acorns. The strongly apical dominant tree with symmetrical growth and clean foliage make it ideal for an ornamental oak with edible acorns. The acorns are like chinkapin oak in size and drop free of the cap. The tree is originally from Illinois. It is hardy into zone 4. Whip and tongue or cleft graft works for this selection and appears amenable to burenglish oak rootstock but not pure English oak. Trees callus well after the first year of grafting. Scions can be requested with an order of seeds of the bur-chinkapin oak acorns. 

The name Ooti was derived from the native American use of acorns as food in California and the book published by the state of California of the public demonstrations done on traditional acorn processing by a native American still maintaining that tradition in California. I am still looking for the title so bear with me.  In English it means protection and kindness.

There is another oak selection called Ooti named over two decades after I released Ooti oak which is not related to Oikos Tree Crops. The selection that is found at Cornell University is the correct Ooti oak as far as I know. However several people told me recently they were removing all of the vegetation in that area of campus including the tree they purchased from me back in the 90's or early 00's. The tests confirm this hybrid as seedlings as well as the grafted Ooti tree can tolerate much higher levels of soil alkalinity. The Ooti bebbs oak at Morse Nursery is not from Oikos Tree Crops as far as I can tell. But they did purchase many trees from me and have plantings that likely contain some of my germplasm including seedlings of Ooti.