Yellowhorn / Yellow Horn / Goldenhorn / Xanthoceras sorbifolium (was Xanthoceras sorbifolia )

This plant was just showcased on the BBC's Radio 4 programme Gardener's question time, the expert gardener who was talking about it said he could only get it to germinate in ericaceous (ie acidic) compost not sure if you can get this in the US but if you can the feature is 26 mins in https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013zsg

I see Sheffield's now has seed in stock.

I just bought some seeds off ebay, grown in Florida. We shall see what they think of Missouri!

I have some seeds sown, but I'm running out of hope. I had ten seeds, two germinated quickly and then more or less immediately molded and died. The rest seem unwilling. I switched the top layer of soil in the pots for something with way more sand in it, to hopefully stop the mold in case any more germinate. Wonder if I just watered too much?

I work at Trees That Please in Tome New Mexico. We have quite a few yellowhorn trees on property as well as propagate them. I cannot find if they have oxalates though. Does anyone know?

I just harvested the first nuts from my 3-year-old yellowhorn tree today. I'm located in Denver, Colorado, growing region 5.

Last year I grew out a bunch of yellowhorn seeds I got from Sheffields. Before planting I scarified them by cutting a notch in each seed by rubbing them back and forth on one corner of a triangular shaped file, and then I soaked them for 24 hours before planting in an air pruner bed filled with a compost/biochar mix. Excellent germination, and they grew quite vigorously. Some of them died off over the course of the summer (I think from over watering), but I planted out the remaining living ones last fall after they had gone dormant. I had read that they really don't transplant well, but pretty much every tree I planted came back strong this spring and they are all doing well. I think I have about a dozen of them, so I am looking forward to getting some nuts from them in the coming years.

I had great success using yellow horn nut from maple valley farm, online. Stratified seed by putting in a ziplock of moist peat in the fridge, and alternating between freezer and fridge like 15 times, maybe a day in each, each time. Then I still had to nick the seed case at the lighter color on the shell to expose the white underneath. Then and only then did I get great germination. My seedlings are around 5" high so far. I just wanted to return to this thread to share my experiences germinating yellow horn nut.
Good luck!

Update on my Texas Yellowhorn experience. I mentioned above die back issues, or trees outright dying. Two possibilities since I am having more success now. One is planting in locations with soils that get too wet. The trees that died were in flat parts of my yard. We get huge gushing rain falls when it happens so that area does not drain as well. Note this is not sitting in pooled water, just a flat area. The other possibility is I got some disease trees, or the locations planted had some disease in the roots. I still have one of my diseased trees growing but it is stunted and prone to die back periodically. Since this remaining tree has better drainage, I think the issue is some sort of disease. I don't know what, but my remaining affected tree is 5 years old, only one foot tall and not healthy.

On the assumption I got some diseased trees and/or planted in bad spots, I got some seeds from multiple different sources (not these things are not self pollinating, so you need different genetic stock to cross pollinate, hence the seeds from different sources). I have also noted if you start these indoors as I was doing you need to be very careful on transplantation. If I grew these in shallow pots they did not do well when planted out. When I grew them in tall tubes and being very careful with planting out it worked much better. There is a tap root with these, I am guessing the small pots has the tap root swirling around the bottom of the pot and that is not good. I have also direct seeded out doors both in the fall and in the spring, and both worked fine. Ideally direct seeding is best but starting indoors is possible as noted. Also I planted these on slopped locations in my yard to insure good drainage. All is going great now. These new trees so far have no die back, no diseases and are growing healthy. My oldest is about 4 years old, maybe 3-4 feet tall, has flowered and produced nuts in year three. In year four, this year we had a very dry hot spring with an even hotter dry summer reaching as high as 110 at times, with about 60 days of about 100. Bone dry all summer. Of course I regularly watered as I did not wish to test how drought tolerant these really are but even with watering they were relatively dry. This was enough to keep me from getting nuts this summer but the tree otherwise handled the heat without issue and grew nicely. Also planted out or seeded new plants, and with watering they also survived the summer. So now got 5 growing, one big, the rest one year old. As sources noted it is slow growing and I expect by year 5 it will be about 5 feet tall. So they grow in the brutal Texas heat in 8a, are at least somewhat drought tolerant and would not be surprised if they are very drought tolerant upon reaching larger sizes of 5 feet or more. When they reach this maturity I will test the drought tolerance with less watering and will report back. So I have cracked the code it seems and should be getting a bunch of nice trees with lots of nuts in a few years.

OK getting more experience with Yellowhorns as each year goes by. I have several trees of different ages. I mentioned earlier die back problems, so one tree planted 6 years ago had bad die back, but did not kill it, limped along for two years, now seems to be growing at a normal pace. It is flowering and seems so far I might get one fruit from it. But due to the die back this bush is only 1.5 feet tall.  I have my healthy 5 year old tree which is finished flowering and putting on growth and will probably reach 5-6 feet this year. This year it appears I will be getting maybe 5 fruit (each contains several nuts if you are unfamiliar) from this one tree. I did have a branch die back on my healthy tree this year (so guess it is not 100% healthy now), but it was one branch on a multi-branched shrub. Cut that off and the rest is growing normally and robustly. As noted earlier I have pollen from other trees frozen or from other trees flowering. It is unclear if these are self fertile at all, but I have read maybe partial. That could be, but wasn't taking chances so got pollen from other unrelated trees (which I got from different sources so hopefully have compatible genetics for pollination, which appears to be so). Another detail about this tree if you are not familiar is it has male and female flowers on  stalks it puts out. Male flowers open first at the base of the stalk, then as flowering moves up the stalk you will get some female flowers along with the male, with females more towards the end of the stalk. Some of the flower stalks are all male however. On my 5 year old tree I think I had 4-5 all male flower stalks, and 5 which had female and male flowers. I only have three trees flowering this year and seems to be happening similarly so maybe this is how the tree flowers.  If you look in the flower and see a little mound at the bottom that is the ovary topped with the pistil, male flowers will not have this. So obviously you want to be pollinating those with that are female. Male flowers seem to have pollen immediately after opening and have yellow interiors. Not certain but it looks like the pollen is reduced or gone as the male flower turns red in its interior. So based on my biggest tree I started by getting one fruit on years three, year 4 really bad drought and heat so no fruit, now year 5 with maybe 5 fruit. I seem to be getting one fruit per stalk (that has female flowers) with the other developing little fruits aborting on the same stalk. This might be due to the trees size, maybe when it is a lot bigger there will be more than one fruit per stalk. Just a guess though on that. The tree grows on the slow side but as it gets bigger the new growth gets proportionately bigger and thus puts on more size a bit faster. It is a 5 year crawl to get to about 5 feet tall, but I suspect it will be only 2-3 years to get a ten foot tree so you have to have some patience. All in all things seem to be working for the most part now with less die back and I have 9 trees planted of varying ages of 1-6 years. I had bought seeds from 3 different sources in the hope for genetic diversity which I seem to have. Also recommend these for your front yard as a beautiful spring flowering tree, it puts on quite a show as well. See you next years with the next update lol.

I have one tree in my house in Nigeria Abuja and it is producing nut and had no clue what it is and everyone around me didn’t know and wanted to cut it down. I was so fascinated about it and I told them to leave it to my surprise it started to produce fruit.