As soon as a typical sight, Missouri’s native chestnut tree, Castanea ozarkensis, supplied meals for individuals and animals in addition to wooden for furnishings and musical devices. Now, the tree, additionally referred to as the Ozark chinquapin, is unfamiliar to most Missourians.
Within the early 20th century, chestnut blight worn out hundreds of thousands of Castanea ozarkensis. The remaining timber develop solely to a fraction of their former massive stature and produce few viable seeds.
However there may be hope for this as soon as beloved tree, because of efforts from the Ozark Chinquapin Basis, with assist from the Missouri Botanical Backyard, to establish and cross blight-resistant remnant timber with related survivors and plant them within the chinquapin’s historic vary.
What’s the Ozark chinquapin?
Castanea ozarkensis, or the Ozark chinquapin, is a tree native to the Ozark-Ouachita Mountain areas of Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. It will also be present in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Japanese, and some others scattered areas within the southeastern US.
Earlier than blight, the tree was as soon as a typical upland forest species, and the drought-tolerant hardwood timber grew as much as 65 toes tall and a couple of–3 toes in diameter. Now, the timber now to be 20–30 toes tall. It blooms from Could to June, producing yellowish-white flowers and sprout inexperienced rectangular leaves that flip a shade of yellow within the fall.
The tree produces extremely nutritious, sweet-tasting edible chestnuts.
Chestnuts as a meals supply
Ozark chestnuts are edible uncooked or roasted. They will also be utilized in baked items. The chestnuts had been as soon as a meals supply for Native People and early settlers. Indigenous individuals used them in steamed corn bread dishes much like tamales that usually contained beans and nuts.
Native wildlife, together with squirrels, chipmunks, deer, and birds, loved the candy chestnuts as nicely.
Medication and Music
Ozark folklore archives point out that the Ozark chinquapin had historic medical makes use of, too, together with a tea constituted of boiling leaves or nuts to treatment a cough, chilly, or sore throat. The hardy wooden of the chinquapin was used extensively for furnishings and fences as a consequence of its rot resistance. Wooden was additionally used to create musical devices, together with fiddles and banjoes.
Learn extra about Ozark chinquapins and its musical traditions. >
What occurred to the Chinquapin inhabitants?
Cryphonectria parasitica, generally referred to as Chestnut blight, arrived within the U.S. from imported chestnut timber from Asia within the 1800s. The illness was first recognized in New York in 1904, based on the Ozark Chinquapin Basis, and reached the Ozark space within the Sixties. Inside a decade, Ozark Hills “had been suffering from the lifeless, rot-resistant carcasses of Ozark chinquapin timber that reached as much as 65 toes excessive”. The blight worn out all however just a few massive mature tree.
Whereas there are nonetheless uncommon massive timber all through the vary, most chinquapins that survive at present are small and produce only a few seeds wanted to repopulate the species.