Hackberry trees for a dry climate

First off my stats. Zone 5b. 6300' altitude. 16" annual precipitation.

I am currently planning my food forest and in all my searching through the USDA database I have arrived at one tree that is best for my situation... The hackberry. According to the USDA it can survive on 14 inches of rain, grows fast and tall, can tolerate shade, low moisture use, highly drought tolerant, and also creates a tasty food product. Most importantly I can buy them cheaply from the forest service seedling program. This could be the backbone and overstory of my food forest, but I am hesitant. I don't see these trees anywhere around the area. I have not heard of anyone using them in a dryland situation.

I need confirmation before I buy 300 of these. Has anyone kept these alive in semi arid conditions without irrigation? Is there a reason they are not widespread? Is there a better option for overstory?

The humble Hackberry is the dominant tree species on my property. Sorry I cannot comment on your growing conditions (I'm 5b, but 35" of annual precip) What I can say is  that "tasty food product" is... not the most accurate. This is a dry, tough berry that the raccoons and birds will eat in the winter for lack of any other food... but not of much interest for humans outside of an emergency survival situation in my opinion.  
They are tough and tenacious so I bet they would grow. I would just hesitate to go whole hog with 300 though. Some diversity would likely be better for you, especially if you include some known species native to your area.

I also live in hackberry central, and I also concur the wild variety here has virtually no food value whatsoever. The berries are the type that is basically a seed with a thin layer of skin on it with no flesh and a bad taste. Maybe the ones you have available are a special variety? I would like to find such a tree. The hackberries here are also a swamp tree. I am surprised at your research, which also makes me think they may be a different tree altogether. The ones here have the widest, shallowest root system of any tree I have ever known. Indeed, you cannot push one over with a bulldozer because the root ball extends under the tracks. You must break it loose, then back up and hook the blade on the edge of the root ball. It can then be levered over, but I have actually seen some broken loose that could be pushed along the ground and still remain upright! As far as being tall, they typically do get large, but branch out about eight feet from the ground, so do not typically have long logs. Most places they are considered a nuisance, which is why I have read large ones are not common in many areas. I do like them, though.

I have a house in the Texas Hill Country that has several growing which probably came up wild years ago.

That area does not get much rain and is hot.

I found this in the Similar Threads that might be of interest if you have not seen it:

https://permies.com/t/36957/Hackberry-Desert-Food-Forest

Interesting! We had them growing around us here in zone 8A, 4340' elevation, official avg. 13" precip./yr. (but almost none in the last year), but almost all of them are dead after the last year. Others saying they have wide shallow root systems helps to explain that. My husband likes the berries, and they do have a touch of sweetness to that thin dry shell around the seed, but I have to agree with other that I don't see much food value in them. There are two kinds near us, though, and I haven't managed to try the kind that my husband has said are juicier yet because we haven't found one fruiting. They definitely grow only along creeks and tanks, so clearly they need more available soil moisture than is available in most parts of this area. Also, I don't believe I've ever seen one as high up as 6300' elevation, although I could be wrong.

What are your local oak species? Do you have one that's particularly drought resistant, maybe something like the Emory oak or a pin oak? What part of the country are you in? Do you have any local nitrogen-fixing trees, like mesquite or acacia? A mix of good local trees would probably be better, as others have noted, than a whole lot of one kind that might fail at the same time like all the hackberries have around us in the last year. That would cause a huge fire danger in this dangerous drought time in the west if we had a lot of them all in one place. Not that we don't have huge fire danger in general and many fires burning around us already because everything is crispy...

The Colorado Forest service says they are Celtis Occidentalis. But, I cannot confirm how they taste. I think you might have the southern variety  celtis laevigata.

Beth Wilder wrote:Interesting! We had them growing around us here in zone 8A, 4340' elevation, official avg. 13" precip./yr. (but almost none in the last year), but almost all of them are dead after the last year. Others saying they have wide shallow root systems helps to explain that. My husband likes the berries, and they do have a touch of sweetness to that thin dry shell around the seed, but I have to agree with other that I don't see much food value in them. There are two kinds near us, though, and I haven't managed to try the kind that my husband has said are juicier yet because we haven't found one fruiting. They definitely grow only along creeks and tanks, so clearly they need more available soil moisture than is available in most parts of this area. Also, I don't believe I've ever seen one as high up as 6300' elevation, although I could be wrong.

What are your local oak species? Do you have one that's particularly drought resistant, maybe something like the Emory oak or a pin oak? What part of the country are you in? Do you have any local nitrogen-fixing trees, like mesquite or acacia? A mix of good local trees would probably be better, as others have noted, than a whole lot of one kind that might fail at the same time like all the hackberries have around us in the last year. That would cause a huge fire danger in this dangerous drought time in the west if we had a lot of them all in one place. Not that we don't have huge fire danger in general and many fires burning around us already because everything is crispy...

Thanks for the reply Beth. It's good to hear that it grows with so little moisture. My local oak species is scrub oak which tops out at 12 feet. I want more of an overstory to shade my land. I would go for black locust, but they are not sold by the colorado forest service. It's too cold for mesquite and acacia. My other options for overstory are siberian elm (40 ft), chokecherry (20 ft), or ponderosa pine (45-100 ft). Perhaps I should try a mix of all of them and see what does best.

My other question to the entire permie community is how high should an overstory be?

I believe our two species here are Celtis laevigata var. reticulata (netleaf or canyon hackberry) and Celtis pallida (desert hackberry). They don't grow very tall here, although somewhat taller than the mesquite.

Chokecherry sounds like a great option to me for both overstory and edibility!

I live in an area (around 12 " of rain) in a desert where I have a different two types of hackberry than you do. So I have Celtis Pallida and Celtis Reticulata rather than Celtis Occidentalis.

So not your variety, but based on my own varieties, there are some likely similarities that might be a problem.  My own personal thoughts would be that a hackberry for your area might not be the best idea IF one of the reasons you are choosing it is for berry production.

The berries for our desert ones are rather bland (not bad tasting, just bland), but usually varieties like yours, that are used to a slightly wetter climate are tastier, so I imagine taste would be fine.

However, I think the issue for you is going to be the rainfall. I double checked, and your variety of hackberry can survive from about 14" to 60 " of rainfall, and you said you get around 16", yes?  

The thing is, surviving is not the same as setting fruit. Living in a desert, I have gotten to see how my hackberries act along their survival range for rainfall, with some higher and lower rainfall years.

And in the lower rainfall years, the hackberry does just fine, but as it doesn't have as many resources to survive with, it sacrifices making flowers and berries for simply surviving, you know?  

On high rainfall years, there are tons of berries, and even in drought, there will be a few, but the closer to their lower limit of rainfall you go, the fewer berries you are going to get. So for your level of rainfall, I don't think you'd get much from this variety of berry.

That's going to be an issue for most of the plants you may be able to get food from, if they CAN survive low rainfall, but usually live in areas with more rainfall: the low end of a plant's expected resources usually means lower fruit production.

Another thing you are going to run into with any plants - and this one is honestly crummy - is growth rate. A lot of perennials that grow in low water environments have slow growth during drought as one of their survival traits. So they may grow more quickly when irrigated or when there's increased rainfall, but they can grow incredibly slowly when rainfall is scarce. How quickly they grow can end up being a really important detail to figure out about any of the plants you want to grow in the low water environment.

I'm not sure what would be a good overstory for your area - I'm at a much lower elevation with higher heat, so the trees I have wouldn't do well at higher elevation, sorry to say.  The main thing I'd look for is a plant where 16 inches of rain is closer to the mid-range of its expected rainfall, if you want it for any food purposes.

Skyler, I was wondering if you planted these trees and how are they doing?

Anne. Thanks for your interest. After reading the responses, I scaled down to 25 hackberries bought from cold stream farms and tucked them away in shady spots. They haven't leafed out yet... if they survived. I will post my full 1 year tree survivability report around June when I can fully inventory the surviving trees.