ABOUT OZARK CHINQUAPIN
History and Background
The Ozark Chinquapin (Castanea ozarkensis) is a drought tolerant hardwood tree that inhabited the rocky upper slopes and ridge tops of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Restoration Work
Volunteers cross-pollinate blight-resistant trees and place bags to prevent competing pollen from reaching the female flowers
BECOME A MEMBER
How You Can Help
If you want to help us you can get involved by becoming a member. Every year we ship members seed taken from trees on our tests plots showing levels of blight resistance
OUR MISSION AND VISION
The Ozark Chinquapin Foundation (OCF) is a non-profit organization of outdoors-men and women with a vision of restoring the Ozark Chinquapin to its historic native range. Through our efforts, and those of hundreds of volunteers over the last decade, we are attempting to establish a viable seed base through research and the manual cross-pollination of surviving trees. Our goal is to develop a 100 % pure Ozark Chinquapin that is blight resistant, and distribute the seeds to everyone interested in helping.
Membership Now Available Online!
JOIN THE OZARK CHINQUAPIN FOUNDATION
If you are interested in joining our efforts and obtaining seed, we welcome your help and support! Membership in the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation is $30.00 per year. If you would like to give a gift with your membership you can do that by typing in a custom amount.
Seed from the Ozark Chinquapin are still very rare and seed with resistance even rarer. However, every year we are able to ship seed with better resistance than the year before. Every year we ship members seed collected from our research test plots.
There is no guarantee these seed are blight resistant. However, the parent trees these seed were collected from are large (11″ – 21″ Dia.) 100% pure Ozark Chinquapin trees that exhibit varying levels of resistance.
New memberships or renewals will have their seed shipped in January-March 2018 in order of membership received. With your membership you get 3-5 rare seed depending on availability, growing instructions, updates on restoration progress and the first opportunity at resistant seed as they become available from research test plots.
Thank You for your help and support!
New Updates!
Spring 2018 we will begin conducting a leaf assay to evaluate resistance of the trees we’ve cross pollinated. Learn more here.
