Tissue Culture Okei Chestnut Trees

Tissue culture Okei Chestnut trees grown to 30-40 inches tall and shipped bare root in fall. The trees will be packed for safe shipping and should be removed from the bag and heeled upon arrival and then watered until ready to plant.

The photos are of the trees in the various stages of propagation & growth. Orders will be fulfilled in Winter 2024/2025 based on customer preference and growing region.

About the Okei Cultivar

The Okei Cultivar of chestnut is a hybrid variety developed by UC Davis. It's a cross between a Japanese chestnut and an Allegheny chinquapin, combining desirable traits from both parents that results in exceptionally large nuts, but fewer total lbs per tree than other varieties.

Okei blooms at a similar time as Colossal and is an excellent pollinizer. Like other varieties, Okei chestnut trees are fast growers but tend to not grow as tall as other chestnuts. The trees can be grown in USDA zones 4-8.

We deliver trees to growers in all parts of the U.S.. Before selecting a cultivar for your farm, we recommend speaking with growers in your area, extension agents, or other advisors to select the best cultivars for your specific growing conditions.

Recommended Pollinizers:

Okei is not considered "male pollen sterile" so may be used as a pollinizer for other varieties, especially other European x Japanese chestnut (Castanea sativa x crenata) hybrids such as Colossal and Bouche de Betizac. For more information on pollinizer selection see our Resources Page.

About Tissue Culture Propagation

Chestnuts are notoriously difficult to get into tissue culture. This means growers have had to use other forms of propagation, such as grafting and air layering to plant or expand an orchard. Non-tissue culture forms of propagation are both time intensive and have very high failure rates. For example, it's not uncommon for 50% of crafted chestnuts to die back to the graft within a few years.

Tissue culture chestnuts do not require grafting or air layering. There is no root stock and scion. Each tree is grown from a small piece of juvenile wood and is therefore a single, uniform tree.