Ashworth
Quercus macrocarpa
The record
- Parentage
- Quercus macrocarpa
- Origin
- Fred L. Ashworth, later introduced by Bill MacKently · Heuvelton, St. Lawrence County, New York
- Rights
- rights unknown — No patent, certificate, or trademark found in the sources consulted.
- Acorn
- Small and sweet, low enough in tannin that one or two leachings are reported to be enough
- Bearing
- Precocious — a few acorns reported on second-year trees
- Yield
- High
Description
The one entry in this file selected for the acorn rather than the silhouette, and the reason the file exists.
Fred Ashworth founded St. Lawrence Nurseries at Heuvelton in far northern New York in 1923, propagating fruit and nut trees for cold climates. He found a small, prolific bur oak by a road with notably good acorns and brought it into the nursery; Bill MacKently later refined and introduced it. It is described in the sources as the first named selection of an uncultivated oak made specifically for low-tannin edible acorns.
Read the word selection carefully. Ashworth is described as a northern New York strain at least as often as a clone, and what nurseries sell under the name is generally seedlings. Oak seedlings do not come true. A grower buying ‘Ashworth’ is buying the population and its odds, not the individual tree Ashworth found — which is not a defect so much as an accurate picture of where this crop actually is. Two thousand years behind chestnut, and moving.
Where to find it
- Oikos Tree Crops acorns and seedlings, not grafted clones
- Cricket Hill Garden
- Edible Acres