American chestnut

“ The Chinese chestnut grows well throughout the southern part of the natural range of the American chestnut and southward to the Gulf Coast, and possibly even into central Florida. Farther north it apparently grows and produces better crops along the Atlantic Coast than inland, thus indicating the need of this species for a long growing season and freedom from late spring and early fall frosts. In the plantings in Georgia, from Atlanta to the southward, no loss of crop from late spring frosts has ever been noted. ”

“ The chief aim of this breeding work, which has been carried on now without interruption since 1930, is to develop a tall timber type of chestnut by breeding the American species with the blight resistant but comparatively low-growing Japanese and Chinese chestnuts, Castanea crenata and C. mollissima, respectively. Practically all trees of our valuable American chestnut of any appreciable size have now been killed to the ground by the blight fungus, Endothia parasitica. ”

“ No one with discrimination will for a moment hesitate, after eating a nut of both, to cheerfully choose the American native as best worth his commendation, though he may come to understand the food value, after cooking, of the chestnuts used so freely in parts of Europe.
As a forest tree, however, our American sweet chestnut has a place of its own. Naturally spreading in habit when growing where there is room to expand, it easily accommodates itself to the more cramped conditions of our great woodlands, and shoots upward to light and air, making rapidly a clean and sturdy stem. ”

“ I think the greatest tragedy that ever befell American horticulture was the chestnut blight. Not so long ago every hill and mountain-side east of the Mississippi River, from near the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border was covered with native chestnut trees producing millions of pounds of food for man and beast. Today all has been devastated by this terrible blight and nothing remains save leafless trunks, like tombstones, in memory of a grand food tree. ”

“ It seems useless to compete with those imported from Italy. Ours are far superior, and many who remember the American chestnut, will, I believe pay a luxury price for good quality chestnuts.
In 1946, we purchased a 10-1/2 acre piece of land, 16 miles southwest of Rochester for the purpose of planting a chestnut orchard. This land had not been worked for about twelve years. The soil is heavy and fertile, typed as Poygan clay loam. Bed rock is sixty feet below the surface. The following spring, we planted about 300 trees and each year more are set out. ”

“ Asiatic chestnuts and hybrids are more likely to develop into forest trees when planted on cool, moist, fertile situations; (2) in their silvicultural characteristics they are more nearly like our native yellow-poplar, northern red oak, and white ash, than like our American chestnut and native chinkapins; (3) with respect to tolerance of shade, they are much like our northern red oak; and (4) neither the Chinese nor the Japanese chestnut has quite the same forest-type growth as that of our native American chestnut. ”

“ Now when we take these first-generation hybrids, cross them back with the Chinese and get more resistance, as we have done so many times in the past, we lose that rapid and more upright growth habit of the American chestnut. ”

“ One of these trees was diseased, the other had no disease upon it.
The Japanese chestnuts have been known for a long time to be highly resistant to the inroads of this disease. Some may be immune, if we use the word immune in a very loose sense. It has been regarded as of rather coarse quality and some varieties as entirely unfit for human food. This is true of many of the Japanese chestnuts, but I have recently seen some which, so far as I could tell, were nearly as sweet as the American chestnut and Paragon chestnut which I tested at the same time and which were growing side by side. ”

“ In whole states along the Atlantic Seaboard, it has been wiped out by a fungus disease introduced from Japan some 25 years ago. Pennsylvania allows no chestnut trees to be shipped outside its limits for fear of further spreading this disease. So far as known chestnut trees from west of the Wabash River are free from infection. From Illinois, there have recently been introduced several varieties of chestnut supposedly of pure American parentage which are quite the equal in size of the European sorts but which have the sweet flavor of true American strains. ”

“ Representatives of the American species of chestnut are found native to a large area. The species seems to avoid extremes of temperature, cold, alkaline or acid soils, and an excess of moisture. It is apparently at its best in the sandy and coarse gravelly soils of the uplands from lower New England to the southern extremity of the Piedmont Plateau in the East and from the extreme southern part of eastern Michigan to northern Mississippi on the West. ”

“ The nuts are sweet and edible and have great market value. The trees bear fruit when they are very young, and some Western farmers find that orchards of these trees bring better returns than the same amount of land in farm products.
The chestnut is closely allied to the sweet or Spanish chestnut of Europe. The nuts of the American species are sweeter than those of the Spanish chestnut, but they are much smaller. From a French experiment it was found that the kernel of the chestnut yields sixteen per cent of good sugar.
CHESTNUT
Castanea dentata
Page 82
1. ”

“ Rooting Chestnuts from Softwood Cuttings
ROGER W. PEASE, West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station,
Morgantown, W. Va.
Some 15 or 20 years ago the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station undertook to develop, if possible, blight resistant chestnuts from American chestnut stock. With the passage of time the approach to the problem has changed. During the early days little thought was given to procedures for propagation, but recently the emphasis has shifted toward methods for propagation when and if there are found hardy, timber-type, blight-immune chestnuts of any species. ”

“ The chestnut about the head in adult males varies in amount with the individual; sometimes (as in 20,633, May, Moose Factory, Hudson’s Bay Territory) there is an oblong spot of chestnut in the middle of the crown, but generally this is absent. Very frequently the chestnut tinges the throat. All variations in these respects appear, however, to be individual, and not dependent at all on locality. West Indian specimens appear to be absolutely identical with those from North America.
Autumnal specimens are browner, the chestnut markings much obscured.
PLATE XII.
1. ”

“ In the East, it is well known that the native species does not come into bearing until 12 or 15 years of age at best, and that to induce pollination and a set of nuts, it is necessary to inter-plant a number of varieties together. Had groups of varieties of American or European origin been planted on the Coast, instead of single trees of the former or varieties from Asia, it is not improbable that the present attitude toward the chestnut in the Pacific Northwest would have been quite different. ”

“ Chestnut trees are sometimes heard of in this country with trunks ten and twelve feet through, but such must be very scarce, because no one seems to know just where they are located. It is not improbable that in rare cases such sizes have existed. In France and Italy trees much larger are well authenticated, but that chestnut is of a species different from ours. ”

“ The concealed portion of the coverts is dark chestnut barred rather finely with black; the black wider than the interspaces. The tail-feathers are dark brownish-chestnut, with numerous transverse bars of black, which, when most distinct, are about a quarter of an inch wide and about double their interspaces; the extreme tip for about half an inch is plain chestnut, lighter than the ground-color ”

“ The next slide shows a typical instance of malformation between the Japanese and native chestnut. I understand that this is not unusual at all. The Japanese, ordinarily, does not make a good union with the American sweet chestnut. That slide was taken in Indiana. It is a twenty-five acre paragon orchard owned by Mr. Littlepage and Senator Bourne of Oregon, planted in the spring of 1910. The next slide shows one of the trees in the orchard during its first season. Mr. ”

“ Before the turn of the century, and even before chestnut blight had swept through our eastern forests, destroying one of our most valuable commercial timber trees, European and Asiatic chestnuts had been introduced. They made variable growth in the Gulf States, along the eastern seaboard from Florida to southern Maine, the southern half of Pennsylvania, southwestern Michigan, southeastern Iowa, down the Mississippi River Valley and on the Pacific Coast. These trees were grown for horticultural purposes, and for the most part, represented large-fruited varieties of Japanese chestnuts. ”

“ Chestnuts, though a very common dessert fruit in France, are comparatively little used in England, though there is no reason why they should not be much cultivated, as they grow well in a cold, and even in a mountainous country. In Perigord they count eight different species of chestnuts, and there, as well as in Brittany, the chestnut forms a staple article of food for the peasantry. ”

“ A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they are again struck down.
I have had no serious trouble with blight in any of the named chestnut varieties, either Chinese or Japanese. I have lost some trees by its entrance into the seedling stock, but not many. My greatest headache has been sun-scald and winter killing, or to be more exact, "early spring" killing.
One of the juvenile characteristics of oriental chestnuts is the retention of their leaves all winter. They also grow in a rather sprangling way. ”

“ The Japanese varieties are usually injured by the winter in central New York. The European varieties are somewhat hardier, and some of the varieties will thrive in the northern states. Chestnuts are very easily grown, although the bark disease now threatens them. They usually bear better when two or more trees are planted near each other. Sprouts in old chestnut clearings are often allowed to remain, and sometimes they are grafted to the improved varieties. ”

“ They live. Those that are not sprayed die, unless given tiresome attention. That settles that question for my part. Chestnuts may not be raised in forest form because it does not pay to spray and cut to that extent. But chestnuts may be raised profitably in orchard form by people who are willing to take the trouble to spray them, and to cut out blight early. It seems to me that people should be properly warned that they may plant chestnuts in orchard form provided they are willing to look after them, otherwise we ought to guard against the public buying chestnut trees, unwarned. ”

“ Chinese chestnuts are hardy from Maine to Florida. I think they winter kill because of unhealthy condition of the tree. The place that I did live, at McLean, Virginia, was low in a frosty place, and the first spring they killed back three times before they took off. Where I live now in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is orchard country, the Chinese chestnut killed back in the spring, but there is nothing the matter with their winter hardiness. They stand winter cold as good as a walnut tree. ”

“ In France, chestnut-trees are more common; and they are divided there into two kinds: the chataigniers and the marroniers; the former bearing about the same relation to the latter as the crab does to the apple. The best chestnuts in France are those called les marrons de Lyons. The sweet chestnut is a native of Asia; but it has also been found in the north of Africa and North America. It is always propagated by seeds, and thrives best in a deep sandy loam; it will grow in even the poorest gravel, but it never does [Pg 234] well in either a calcareous soil, or a stiff clay. ”

“ The chestnut in England has in modern times been treated with less courtesy than it deserves. It is a better tree in many ways than the elm, which is usually placed only a step or two below the oak. It may not be so graceful, but it is beautiful notwithstanding, and far less treacherous. In such esteem, indeed, was it held by our ancestors that many of their beautiful half-timbered houses, which a careless posterity supposes to have been invariably built of oak, were largely constructed of chestnut, while many an old house is full of admirably carved and polished chestnut furniture. ”

“ The chestnut is, in truth, one of our finest deciduous trees. It has a luxuriance of healthy, dark-green foliage, and is happy-looking in its abundance of yellow-tasseled blossoms. It is even more beautiful in August, when the young burs mingle their even tinge of brown with the fresh green of the glossy leaves. In old age it has the same firmness that is so noticeable in the oak, and seems to be just as regardless of the winds and gales. ”

“ Zan remembered.
"Anybody else wish to contribute?" asked Miss Miller.
"Every one wants to but can't afford it this time," laughed Jane eagerly.
"Well then, the chestnut is a deciduous tree that grows to a considerable height and size. Its timber is light weight, cross-grained and very durable; that is why it has been preferred in the past for posts. Its leaves are long and shiny and has sharp pointed edges. The nuts are sweet and of a starchy nature, also highly nutritious. ”

“ We scarcely have a forest tree as useful, but if some natural handicap, not yet in sight, does not stay the spread of the blight fungus, our much valued chestnuts appear to be doomed. A few small colonies of diseased, but living sweet chestnut trees, numbering scarcely fifty, have been located in New York City parks and neighboring localities in Long Island, carrying infection at least eighteen years old, where the accompanying stands have completely vanished. ”