Group plants seeds to revive rare trees

Armed with rare seeds and basic tools, a group of volunteers set out Saturday at Hobbs State Park to save a native tree from extinction.

The sun beat down as Al Knox, Hobbs State Park trail maintenance supervisor, held up a Chinquapin seed. He pointed to the seed’s root and explained to a group of Northwest Arkansas Community College students how to correctly plant it.

“We need to make sure the hole is deeper than the root,” Knox said. “Make sure that the tap root is facing down.”

The nearly 15 volunteers started the day about 10:30 a.m. with a goal of planting about 50 Chinquapin seeds on a cleared hill near the park’s visitor center.

The site will be one of afew plots in the Ozark region used to produce Chinquapin seeds, Knox said. He said the hope is to distribute the seeds to people and other parks to increase the tree’s population.

The tree was once found in forests from the Ozarks to the East Coast. However, chestnut blight started killing the Chinquapin trees in the early 1900s. It is believed that the tree’s numbers diminished significantly in Ozark forests in the 1950s.

Nuts from the trees are important to wildlife in the region, Knox said. He said the nut, similar to the chestnut, has a lot of nutrients. Fully mature, a Chinquapin tree produces nearly 6,000 nuts annually in comparison with a mature oak, which produces 2,000 acorns.

“Chinquapins are a smart tree,” Knox said. He added that the tree blooms in lateMay or early June, later than most trees. That means late frosts don’t interrupt the nut production.

Chinquapin trees can sprout from the stumps of trees killed by the blight. Such trees, however, do not reach full maturity and die a few years after producing nuts. Most Chinquapin trees start producing nuts four to seven years after they are planted.

There are few of the fully mature trees, which typically are the top canopy for forests, Knox said. He said Hobbs State Park has only five nut-producing Chinquapin trees.

The Ozark Chinquapin Foundation has been collecting seeds from the mature trees in hopes that they have developed blight resistance, Knox said.

Jaclyn Lantz, 27, of Bella Vista used her hands to evenout soil around a Chinquapin seed Saturday. Lantz and her college biology classmates were given the opportunity for extra credit if they helped plant the trees.

Lantz said she was excited to volunteer.

“I am really humbled that we get to be a part of the reintroduction of a species back into its native environment,” Lantz said.

After planting the seed, a grow tube was placed over it to keep animals away. Netting was placed at the top of the tube to keep birds and wasps away, too.

Mark Curtis, Association for Beaver Lake Environment board member, said the trees affect the entire ecosystem and in return affect Beaver Lake, which is the main drinking water source for the Northwest region.

“This is part of being a citizen of the Beaver Lake region,” Curtis said about volunteering to plant the trees.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 04/20/2014

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