In September 2016 I cordoned off a small corner of the back yard (southwestern corner) so that it was spared from the mower. Initially it was just a patch of long grass and weeds and I called this the "Wild Patch". In late September / October 2016, I made a couple of visits to Brazos Bend State Park to collect acorns, nuts and seeds to scatter onto the ground in the cordoned off area to see if they would germinate. I collected acorns from Shumard Oaks (trees near Elm Lake and Hale Lake), Water Oaks (trees scattered throughout the park), Burr Oaks (White Oak trail), and Swamp Chestnut Oaks (couple of trees near Hale Lake). I also collected nuts from what I thought was a Water Hickory (there is a tree by the Nature Center that looks like a Pecan but the nuts are slightly flattened, and rougher than Pecan nuts, and the husks have pronounced ridges - characteristic of Water Hickory - I later discovered that this is actually a Water Hickory-Pecan hybrid), and seeds from a Water Locust (seed pods are shorter than Honeylocust which I have never positively identified at the park). I also threw in several acorns from my White Oak tree which produced a prolific crop in 2016, and a few red seeds from my Southern Magnolia (not the Bracken Brown Beauty). I was curious to see which ones, if any, would germinate. Although there were plenty of Live Oak acorns in Brazos Bend, I did not put any of these in the "wild patch" as they are such common ornamental trees around here, growing everywhere - trying to see if something a little less common would grow.
I visited Big Thicket (near Beaumont), Turkey Creek Unit on October 22nd where there is a great variety of trees, and collected several types of nuts and seeds. Three types of Hickory nuts including Shagbark Hickory and two other species that did not quite match any of the descriptions in text books or the internet. I also collected acorns from Laurel Oak, Swamp Chestnut Oak, Southern Red Oak (only found one), White Oak, Post Oak, and Willow Oak trees. I also collected seeds from Southern Magnolias and berries from Blackgum and American Holly trees. I scattered all these nuts and seeds from Big Thicket in the "wild patch" to see if any would germinate.
On November 25th, we went back to Big Thicket - this time the leaves of the Swamp Chestnut Oak, White Oak, and Red Maple were starting to turn red. The Southern Red Oaks' leaves were brownish yellow however. On part of the Turkey Creek trail, two or three Swamp Chestnut Oaks had unleashed a bonanza of large acorns - I collected 65 acorns which was only a tiny fraction of them. I scattered most of these also in the wild patch, and planted six of them in two pots.
By February 11th 2017, I counted six Swamp Chestnut Oak seedlings that had germinated in the wild patch, but no sign of anything else germinating. On December 9th 2017, the only seeds to germinate (as far as I could see) seemed to have been those Swamp Chestnut Oaks, and they had become overwhelmed by long grass and weeds. The grass and weeds were now too high for anything else to grow. This is not too surprising as these trees likely prefer relatively open ground in a forest to germinate, with less competition.
On February 17th 2018, as I cleared some of the long grass away in the wild-patch to plant my new Southern Sugar Maple, I discovered a couple of buried Swamp Chestnut Oak seedlings. I dug one of them up and washed off the soil. It is amazing how well-developed the tap-root was of this little seedling - about twice as long as the stem above ground.
Later I cleared all the long grass and weeds and decided to keep it mowed to encourage growth of the tree seedlings. On September 2nd 2018 the wild patch had the following trees which had all sprouted from acorns / nuts / seeds scattered on the ground in 2017. Swamp Chestnut Oak (12 seedlings, 9 of them reasonable quality, 10 of them clustered in the top right corner of the picture below); Shumard Oak or Nuttall Oak (2 seedlings); Burr Oak (6 seedlings, 3 of them good quality); Water Hickory-Pecan hybrid (4 seedlings, 2 of them good quality). I transplanted the following from pots: Western Soapberry from Brazos Bend State Park (1 seedling); American Elm from a small wooded area in Lake Jackson (2 seedlings); Black Willow from next to a bayou near my house (2 cuttings, about 4 ft tall by September 2018). I also planted a Southern Sugar Maple, and a Pawpaw (which lost almost all its leaves) which I purchased in 2018 from Buchanan's Nursery. The biggest plant in the wild-patch at the time (bottom right of picture below) was an unidentified plant which was bending in from the fence line - not sure what this was but I removed it in January 2019. There seem to be 3 main areas where the scattered acorns / nuts mostly sprouted and were doing well, and they were all within about 4 feet of the back fence where it stays flooded a little longer after it rains and where it is shaded from the sun for longer - in fact, further away from the fence there were only four live seedlings that spontaneously sprouted: a Shumard Oak (dead by 2019), a Water Hickory-Pecan, a sickly Burr Oak, and a sickly Swamp Chestnut Oak (dead by 2019). The others further away from the back fence I planted myself. The picture below was taken from above using a drone.
On November 10th 2018, the American Elm seedlings were doing well in the wild-patch. The Western Soapberry and Laurel Oak seedlings were still pretty tiny.
On January 12th, I expanded the area of the wild patch to plant some more seedlings and decided to call this the "Seedling-Patch" from now on. The seedlings that I planted were Durand Oak (Quercus sinuata), 3 X Common Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), and 2 X Red Mulberry (Morus rubra), which I purchased from an online nursery. All were spindly twigs.
By mid December 2019, I had expanded the seedling patch much further along the back fence line with several plantings of purchased seedlings, and three small plots that I had freed from grass and weeds where I planted multiple seeds, nuts, and acorns. The diagram below, superimposed onto a drone image, shows the status in December 2019. Each colored dot represents a different species corresponding to the colored text. The locations where I found the seeds are given in parentheses for the cases where I planted seeds which I had collected myself. The text in italics represents seeds that were planted in November and December 2019, but have not (yet) germinated. Tallying up all the seedlings, I have 46 seedlings in the seedling-patch, from 19 different tree species.
In December 2019 the two Black Willows still had leaves and were about 9 feet tall - not bad for two year's growth. The two American Elms, planted from seed in late 2016, were in December 2019 more than 7 feet tall (left image below). The Western Soapberry which was planted around the same time was still only a few inches tall (right image below).
In mid January I noticed that a creature or creatures had ransacked the area where I planted the acorns from Village Creek leaving only one remaining acorn of Southern Red Oak and one remaining acorn of the unidentified oak, which was likely Northern Red Oak. On January 24th 2020 I noticed four tiny sprouts growing from the area where I had planted the large unidentified Hickory nuts I found in Big Thicket. It is possibly a version of the highly variable Pignut Hickory that has large fruits and thick husks, Carya glabra var. megacarpa. In late February there was an unexpected heavy frost (27 degrees F) and these four tiny sprouts were killed. On March 8th 2020 a hundred or so of the Osage Orange seeds sprouted. It seems that mostly only the seeds from the fruits picked up in Brazos Bend State Park sprouted - most of the ones from the Lake Jackson tree did not germinate - not sure why that is. The pictures in the middle and on the right are from March 12th - a very thick bunch of seeds sprouted from a whole squashed fruit.
The images below are from early April 2020. The seedlings from the whole squashed fruits (bottom of the picture on the left, and picture on the right) have formed a super thick cluster, and several of the seeds from the fruits collected in Lake Jackson (middle of patch) have also sprouted.
On May 10th the Osage Orange patch was even denser.
Around May 12th I noticed the first thorns on the tallest of the young Osage Orange sprouts.
The one remaining Northern Red Oak acorn that didn't get eaten, sprouted in early March: the picture on the left below is from March 10th 2020, and the picture on the right is from March 18th. The leaf shape doesn't look like Northern Red Oak, but I don't know of any other red oak that has this leaf shape - perhaps leaf shape is different with new seedlings?
About six of the Mockernut Hickory nuts have sprouted - the picture below is from March 10th 2020.
...and on April 11th 2020...
The Western Soapberry was sprouting vigorously in April 2020.
The four tiny Pignut Hickory sprouts that were severely damaged by the frost have re-sprouted. The images below are from April 11th 2020.
The Seedling Patch was in general doing well in early April 2020. Below left is a picture of the small grove of three Burr Oaks and two Water Hickory-Pecans in early April. Below right is the same grove in early May. While one of the Water Hickory-Pecans was winning the race for sunlight, the other one was small and contorted by fungus.
Two of the Bitternut Hickory nuts finally sprouted late in the spring. The picture below is from May 10th 2020. The smaller one promptly died (mid May), so then there was only one. Coincidentally, around the same time I realized that my Nutmeg Hickory seedling, mail ordered from "Mail Order Natives", is very likely also a Bitternut Hickory (it has characteristically bright yellow buds).
On May 10th the grove of 8 Swamp Chestnut Oak seedlings, the last survivors of 60 acorns collected from Big Thicket, were growing well. Four of them were particularly vigorous.
In December 2020, the Swamp Chestnut Oak seedlings in the seedling patch had turned deep red, unlike the larger one in my yard which was bald since months ago.
One of the Shumard Oaks also turned red. In fact, looking at the leaf shape, it really looks more like a Nuttall Oak - strange because I don't recall collecting acorns from a Nuttall Oak. The American Elms were doing very well. The trunk of the one on the left had split into vertical-striped patterns all the way up, whereas the one on the right had only recently started splitting.
The Honeylocust seeds I planted last winter sprouted in late spring. In early August, they already have bright red thorns growing from the stem. I think there are a few Water Locust seedlings among them too (to the right of the picture below).
The leaflets of the Water Locust are more rounded than those of the Honeylocust - the red spikes are the same though.
Update from November 2021: the Mockernut Hickory, Pignut Hickory, and Northern Red Oak seedlings have died - the soil was probably just too wet. Luckily I have all three of these species in my new forest in North Carolina!