Rural Missouri - September 2020 - 35

help it live a longer life.
"This one is the oldest live trees I'm
aware of in this area and I really don't
know how old that is," says the 77-year-old
farmer, patting the tree's bark.
To his knowledge, Tom says there's no answer to the disease attacking the butternut, and
through the years, the blight has nearly wiped out
the rich-tasting edible.
Tom gathered up what few nuts he could ﬁnd beneath
the old tree on his property. A butternut on a neighbor's
farm was near death due to grapevine stangulation,
but it had dropped a few nuts, so Tom asked if he
could have them, too. That was the beginning of his
personal quest to save what butternuts he could for
future generations.
Carefully, he stratiﬁes the seeds - a process of
treating seeds to simulate natural conditions so
germination can occur. The process is tedious, but to Tom the time is well-spent
to help end the plight the butternut
faces. The process includes soaking,
then layering the seeds in containers
of sand, then placing them in a cold
environment for a time so the seeds
germinate.
"If I'm lucky, I usually gather anywhere from 10 to 20 nuts each fall. But
one year I gathered 120 nuts between my
tree and a neighbor's, and I had right at 90 of
those germinate," he says.
Tom says he started out last year with high hopes of
gathering a bumper crop of nuts again.
"I counted at least 75 big nuts on my old tree. Then it
ﬂooded and that continued into fall and I couldn't get up
to the tree," he says. "By the time I could drive to it, the
squirrels had eaten most of the butternuts. I think I found
a whopping seven nuts."
Some years, Tom says he doesn't ﬁnd any nuts at all.
"I've seen squirrels dig up a
young seedling just to eat what
little of the nut is still beneath the
root," says Tom.
Once the seeds have germinated, Tom places them in pots and
gives them a little TLC until he
feels they're ready for planting. He
then transplants the seedlings,
careful to select a spot he feels
they'll thrive.
"I've been told butternuts
usually like growing in narrow
valleys," Tom says. "They need a
fair amount of sunlight, but I've
seen them growing with 200-foothigh sycamores towering around
them. So I've scattered them
everywhere on my property."
"Some years we have a lot of butternut seeds and other
years, few to none," says Mike Fiaoni, state forest nursery
supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation's
tree nursery located near Licking.

The forester notes that
while there were several hundred available last year, this year's offerings may be less
due to poor growing conditions for last year's nuts.
"It would be great if someone could come up with a 100
percent butternut cross that's resistant to the canker, but
I don't know of any efforts at this time," Mike says. "When
we do have butternut saplings for sale, they usually sell
out pretty quickly. It's great people want to help keep the
butternut genetics growing across Missouri."
Since starting his efforts six years ago, Tom has planted
more than 80 saplings, each with protective fencing to deter critters from chomping on the tender leaves and bark.
As for the dreaded tree canker
or any other disease that tries to
latch on, all Tom can do is keep a
watchful eye on the trees and help
them stay alive and well.
"At this point, helping them
from becoming extinct is about
the only hope," Tom says. "I've always been told 'There's not much
to you if you don't practice what
you preach.' So I do what I can to
help the land I've got."

"There's not much
to you if you

don't practice what
you preach."

The Missouri Department of Conservation's George O. White State
Forest Nursery will begin taking
online and mail orders for trees on
Sept. 1. You can order from them
online or download a seedling
catalog at https://bit.ly/3gKW3LC, or pick up a catalog at
your local Missouri Department of Conservation ofﬁce. They
recommend checking the online catalog weekly to see if any
backstock has been added to their catalog list.

_ Tom Wekenborg _

SEPTEMBER 2020 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP

https://www.bit.ly/3gKW3LC http://www.RURALMISSOURI.COOP

Rural Missouri - September 2020

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