When Steve Bost set out to restore a native species of the Ozarks, he didn't know he was going on a ghost hunt.
The phantom Steve was after was the Ozark chinquapin, a relative of the American chestnut tree. At one time, it could be found from southern New Hampshire all the way to east Texas and made up 20 percent of temperate forests west of the Mississippi River. That changed with the introduction of chestnut blight from Asia in the early 1900s. The fungal disease ravaged the American chestnut and then the chinquapin once it reached Missouri in the 1950s. So badly were the trees decimated that they were thought to be extinct and that an entire folk culture had vanished with them.
"I was told by experts that the tree I was looking for didn't exist," Steve says. "If I'd believed what they said, it would have stopped right there."
Thanks to close friend Harold Adams, who remembered the trees from his youth, Steve stayed on the hunt. In 2007, he formed the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation to bring back the tree that was once a central part of life for native people, early settlers and their descendants.
The chinquapin, not to be confused with the more common chinkapin oak, is a prolific annual producer -- putting on thousands of nuts. They were so abundant that Ozarkers tell stories of shoveling them into wagons for feeding their family and livestock. The naturally rot-resistant wood of the tree traditionally was used for making fence posts, furniture and dulcimers.
"It's interesting what you find out from some of these people who have firsthand knowledge," says A.J. Hendershott, a regional supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation and member of the foundation's board of directors. "They'd stop a school bus so the kids could all get off, fill their pockets full of nuts and that was their lunch."
The nut carries a host of health benefits. Lab studies revealed it is a rich source of protein, carbohydrates and magnesium. Tea made from the leaves is said to have been a home remedy for whooping cough. So central was it to the diet of the Cherokee Indians that one of their words for the chinquapin translates to "bread tree."
To revive the tree, Steve first had to find them. To date, the foundation has identified 40 trees living in blighted conditions, meaning they have some resistance to the blight. These survivors are important, not only as evidence that the tree still exists, but also to help pass on their traits.
Finding the chinquapins, rare as they are, is actually the easy part. Once a viable tree is found, the genetics must be crossed with another resistant specimen to create even hardier seeds. Steve and volunteers have traveled hundreds of miles to climb 50-foot trees and pollinate them by hand. The first cross-pollination was completed in 2010. With help from the LAD Foundation and Pioneer Forest, the foundation has been planting new trees in plots and studying them for blight resistance as they grow.
The operation has had its trials: At the height of the 2012 drought when his thermometer topped out at 121 degrees, Steve carried gallons of water across hardscrabble hills to keep hundreds of the seedlings from dying.
"We're losing species every year, but this is something real that we're doing," the Ozark Border Electric Cooperative member says. "This is one where they are making a comeback. This is not a pipe dream."
As delicious as the chinquapin nut is to people -- Steve and A.J. compare the taste to a sweet almond -- wildlife from squirrels to black bears love them. The seedlings are planted in 4-foot grow tubes with rocks piled at the base in an attempt to limit how many are eaten by deer and turkeys.
"When we talk to the public about planting trees in general, we tell them plant about double what you think you need because 50 percent will die whether it's weather, wildlife or whatever," A.J. says. "We're dealing with the same problem every forester has, but the stock is limited and that makes it a real challenge."
Not one to put all his chinquapins in one basket, Steve has planted trees across more than a dozen secluded nursery plots in Missouri and Arkansas. As long as supplies hold up, foundation members receive an allotment of seeds in the winter. Ten years after creating the organization and more than 1,000 members later, the seeds have traveled to 34 states, Europe and Australia. Steve says these "tree roots" efforts to preserve the past are the Ozark chinquapin's best chance for the future.
"We've had places offer a lot of money to come get the patent on this, but that's not what this is about," Steve says. "This is so we can plant them, give them to the people who want them and that's the way it should be. We need to let what is best to bring this tree back dictate what we do."
For more information on the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation, visit www.ozarkchinquapin.com or follow them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ozarkchinquapinfoundation.them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ozarkchinquapinfoundation