A short list of trees, drought-resistant and zone 6 okay?

Hello. I am compiling my big list of plants that I want to order and plant from seed. I am hoping to create a wild foods forest, growing plants in my wild foods books rather than conventional annual row crops. I have completed the list of trees so far.

I am in north Arkansas, this is the second year of drought here and I would like to plant accordingly, on the assumptional that there will be more dry years and I won't be irrigating.

Celtis: Sugarberry
Cornus: Cornelian Cherry
Alnus: Grey alder
Crataegus: mayhaw
Amelanchier: Running juneberry
Auracaria: Monkeypuzzle
Ceanothus: Mahala
Diospyros: persimmon
Eleagnus: Autumn olive
Malus: Crab apple, apples will be from seed so I will probably get lots of variety.
Morus: Mulberry
Pinus: Pinion
Persea: Red bay
Prunus: all of 'em
Ribes: Currant
Rosa: Rugosa
Prosopis: Mesquite
Sophora: Pagoda tree
Sambucus: Elderberry

Most of these trees are either edible or N fixing, and I tried to have a good mix of sizes and root styles. Do you think they would all be tough enough for the ozarks?

Much thanks to Edible Forest Gardens, by David Jacke

I'd add to the list:
Jujube
Juniper -- bearing in mind that not all things sold as junipers have edible berries.
Hackberry -- although I have several and have never seen a single fruit. Either squirrels and bird get them or mine are somehow defective.
Trifoliate orange -- kind of edible.
Maybe figs if you have a protected area. Some people in zone 6 manage to grow them.
Redbud trees have edible blooms.
Possomhaw
Pecans

Since you included some shrubs in your list, you could add beautyberry and blackberries, although I'd find some local wild ones that are tasty doing well and take cuttings of those instead of buying named cultivars which are usually not as drought tolerant.

Many prunus sp. are definitely not drought tolerant but some are very tough.
Autumn olive is very invasive so I personally wouldn't plant it.

We are south of you in Stone county ...Some of the mostly native things that grow really well here and probably near you are persimmons (our favorite fruit, wild or domestic), muscadines( produce really well if you can prune a bit and give them sun and support), sumac, mulberry, pawpaw, the coveted black and honey locust, some gooseberries and currents, wild blackberries and raspberries. All survive without irregation but I think in the wild they all produce alot of seedlings to allow the heartiest to survive. Between odd late freezes and frosts, deer and rabbits and woodchucks and squirrels it is really amazing what the forest can provide.
We have found that anything we plant needs deer protection and watering at least for a year or so especially now. We tend to work with what is already native to our forest and give it a little help. Smaller mostly native plants that do well here with no extra water are echinacea, passion flower vine, yarrow ,elder flower, St johns worts, self heal, bergamot, redbuds...I forgot huckleberries...thirty to forty years ago we picked and picked, they were wonderful but rarely has there been a good year since but the plants are everywhere.

Some things you just won't know without trying. Trees and shrubs may be right for the zone but not be able to surive the humidity or the insect population let alone the periods of heavy rains then drought..

Someone else should be more famiiar with your list of trees/shrubs.

Castanea: chestnuts. Mine are all small but I have seen larger ones with good crops (unirrigated) last year in the area (I'm in the ozarks too, in MO). I have many young chestnuts from different sources, and the variation is amazing. Some broke dormancy almost a month after others that were less than 100 ft away. Chestnuts are a great food crop, one of the few temperate tree crops that can be used as a staple because it's more starchy than most nuts.

Also look at xanthoceras sorbifolia (yellowhorn nut). Mine are small as well so I can't vouch for their yield and long-term health here, but they've done well with far less watering than is usually needed for young establishing trees in a drought year.

Persimmons are a great choice, besides our native persimmons, some asian varieties are fully hardy here too. They can be grafted onto established wild persimmon rootstock and then no watering is needed.

One of the most useful links as far as fruit growing for me is this, http://conev.org/fruitbook4.pdf the author's in Virginia so doesn't deal with as droughty or extreme weather as us, but a lot of the info is applicable here.

Richard Kastanie wrote:They can be grafted onto established wild persimmon rootstock and then no watering is needed.

Good to know! We have tons of Texas Persimmon on our place, for some reason it never occurred to me they could be grafted!

Here is yet another old post that merits revival in Woodland Week. This time the theme is around creating a food forest in Zone 6 that is able to withstand increasingly dry conditions. I found it interesting that already 10 years ago, worsening drought was already being planned for. I'm assuming livestock won't have access to the emerging food forest (e.g. toxicity for ruminants is not a significant factor).

Adding to the species already listed in the original post, the following trees and shrubs can provide food or medicine for people in Zone 6 - and are drought tolerant (some only drought tolerant once fully established):

Lilac - the flowers are edible for humans - (the entire plant is edible for livestock) - note, not said to be drought tolerant but still doing well on my farm through recent droughts
Mulberry
Acers (many of them)
Sorbus - service tree - some are edible, check species - variably drought tolerant
Bamboo
Birch (several)
Shrub Lespedeza
Pawpaw
Butternut (plus other members of the walnut family)

I'm interested in other shrubs/trees that folks have found to be drought tolerant.

Species that I observe growing in the deep desert in usda winter hardiness zones 4/6 include:

service berry
goji
apricot
cedar
juniper
pinyon
current
chokecherry
mahogany
Oregon grape

Species that I observe growing on the fringes of the desert include:

apple
plum
hawthorn
Siberian elm
maple
scrub oak