Kreider Bur Oak Acorns

currently unavailable Kreider bur oak represents the midwestern selection of bur oak. In general, the acorns are nearly twice the size of the Michigan types and other northeastern bur oaks. Often  you will find some very heavy corky branched trees in the process of growing them. This indicates their long association with fire on the prairie. That is the joy of growing bur oaks. You see things with them that indicate this long evolutionary history of the plant and its potential use that could be applied throughout the world by its distribution. Every year for many years I purchased many acorns from Ralph Kreider who collected them from certain trees that he found with massive acorns and heavy yields at or near his Illinois farm. I was growing them for the nursery industry at the time as well as collecting from the parks in my area. It became apparent this vigorous seed selection was quite nice and I finally planted some of the most vigorous seedlings at my farm. When they  started to yield, the ground was a paradise of acorns. They usually have few if any weevils too. The vigor and acorn yield are some of the best I have seen where you can spot the huge clusters and dense packing of the acorns all along the branches. This was an ideal tree in many ways.

Further selection could be done to develop a consistently productive tree as well as acorns that drop free of the cap for cultivar develop. But to be honest, I think that might be a waste of time because if you had a large enough population of genetically different plants, there would always be a crop with maybe the exception of frost damage. But no one has tried that to any extent. It is too bad the companies and non profits planting trees are unaware or ignore this type of thinking or think of oak trees as just oak trees and buy them from the conservation districts. A little improvement in selection would go a long way. It takes a good decade or more to fruit a bur oak from acorn. Some take longer, some shorter. Its hard for many to think decades out on planting trees. 

There could be some selection at my farm but at this time, I am not sure if one seedling is somehow superior to another. So further evaluation would be to actually measure yields rather that just look at the ground and go WOW.  I like the WOW factor though.