Chestnut (nut)

“ In a blight region it is preferable to have chestnuts on their own roots. The nearest to own-rooted plants is a graft on their own seedlings. The Chinese and Japanese chestnut in my hands has made a very poor root stock for the American chestnut or its hybrids. The European chestnut is only fair, with the chinquapin somewhat better, but having the disadvantage of being troublesome to get from the seed. The American chestnut, or its American hybrids, is by far the best, providing we can get one with immunity. ”

“ The European chestnut is very susceptible to the blight. A very large coarse nut is produced by the Japanese chestnut and it does not blight quite as readily as the American sorts. The Chinese chestnut is the most resistant to blight and it is admired for its beauty as a lawn tree. Promising varieties include Abundance, Nanking and Meiling. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So far these have shown themselves to be quite tender varieties. I do not consider the chestnut worthwhile because of the constant threat that if a grove should be started it might soon have the blight in it.
I have several Chinese chestnut seedlings which are making a fairly good growth and in time may become productive trees.
We have one hybrid white oak which has an edible kernel but out of about one hundred nuts you might get one wholesome one free from weevils. The tree is very old and is rapidly declining. The nut is small but the tree is quite prolific. ”

“ The named varieties of Chinese Chestnut are the most precocious bearers of all the nut trees, are adapted and worthy of planting over a wide area. It should be the duty of every man who is interested in food trees to lend a hand to help re-establish chestnut growing in this country, now that we have blight-resistant varieties. ”

“ I have read interesting statements to the effect that in parts of China and Burma, there are chestnut trees of timber shape and size. Chestnut trees are likely to become of extreme importance in our future economy. The nuts fill a very significant place in our dietary needs. We should continue to plant chestnut trees and take care of them. I have also from 350 to 400 younger trees that are coming on, and I want to plant additional chestnut trees every year. The black walnut and hickory nut are very important, but the chestnut crop is the corn crop of the nuts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like most chestnuts this one [Pg 78] has to be pollinated by taking the staminate bloom from a dwarfed chestnut nearby whose bloom coincides with the blossoming of the female flowers of this Chinese hybrid. Chestnuts rarely set any nuts that produce mature seed from their own pollen but depend on cross-pollination. The nut from this hybrid is also the largest of any that I have grown and to my taste is a palatable one. It may not rank among the best ones of known varieties today, but for our climate I would consider it unusually large and good. ”

“ The Chinese chestnut is largely, although apparently not wholly, self sterile; more than a single seedling or grafted variety should be included in any planting. Several seedlings or several varieties would be better. In seedling plantings, all trees that produce inferior nuts should be removed in order to avoid danger of undesirable pollen influence, either on nut characters, or on the genetic makeup of the embryos if the nuts are to be used as seed.
Harvesting and Curing
Chestnuts should be harvested daily as soon as some begin to ripen and drop to the ground. ”

“ This chestnut blights freely, but it bears so well and so abundantly and with such a good nut that people can afford to plant it in large acreage and let it blight, carrying it along with about the degree of attention that one would naturally give to good apple trees. ”

“ In type and flavor of nut it resembles the European hazel quite strongly under our conditions.
So far, none of the chestnuts, including the Chinese species, have shown great enough resistance to chestnut blight to warrant their recommendation. We still hope that we may discover a good chestnut for this section. The hardy Persian or English walnuts have not been tested long enough to warrant any conclusion as to their promise for New Hampshire; one difficulty will probably lie in the fact that the nuts of some do not ripen properly under our cool, short summer conditions. ”

“ Except as a wild product, this nut has perhaps the least commercial importance of any species mentioned in this paper. A few cultivated varieties are in existence but the nuts are commonly looked upon by experienced growers as novelties rather than as products worthy of special attention. The species is merely that of a dwarf chestnut growing as a shrub instead of as a tree. It is less hardy than the chestnut, being evidently best adapted to the climatic conditions of the southern portion of the chestnut area and even farther south. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 possibilities of growing trees from China, the mollissima, or hybrids of them, bids fair to place the chestnut industry so that we can contend with the blight. We probably will not have immune varieties, but those which are able to live with the blight. That, it seems to me, is a very important consideration, because chestnuts have always been an important nut in our eastern markets, and are important in the European markets as well. ”

“ Speaking of old saws that are always welcome reminds me to protest against the unthinking persons who cry “Chestnut!” against every joke that is not newly coined. In one way it is a [27] compliment, for the chestnut is the sweetest nut that grows; but it does not reach perfection until it has had many soakings and frosts, and has been kicked about under the dead leaves so many times that if it was anything except a chestnut it would have been lost. Good stories are like good principles: the older they are, the stronger their pull. ”

“ Here are the percentage takes for chestnut propagation this year. Of course I don't know how many of these buds will later drop off.
I had a nice crop of Chinese chestnuts on my young Hobson and Zimmerman trees. The 1947 nuts were exceptionally large. One 3-year seedling bore 1 bur with 3 nuts fully as large. Connecticut Yankee bore for the first time, 3 nuts to a bur, but very small, scarcely 1⁄2" in diameter. ”

“ However, both planters and consumers are generally prejudiced against the chestnut. This is easily explained for the reason that either sufficient numbers of varieties have not been planted together to ensure interpollination, or Japanese chestnuts have been planted. Early planters were evidently not aware that most varieties are largely self-sterile, and they did not know that the average Japanese chestnuts are fit for consumption only when cooked. ”

“ Aside from its usefulness as a nut tree the value of our stand of native chestnuts, though already half destroyed, can scarcely be estimated. Every one knows the ease with which a healthy chestnut woodland reproduces itself by sprouts and the extreme value of its timber for posts, telegraph and telephone poles, for furniture and for tanning extracts, now made from both bark and wood. ”

“ Castanea dentata has the most uniformly delicious nuts. It is excelled, however, by many individuals of C. pumila. In our opinion these possess the highest quality nuts in the entire genus.
Our American chestnuts hybrids, especially those with C. Sequinii, are very interesting. The latter make a dwarf tree that bears incredible amounts of small chestnuts. They have pollination problems to be solved and the nuts are seldom filled. Pollen sterility is a common feature with them. They are also everbearing.
Some Northern strains of Chinese chestnut seem barely hardy but promise to survive. ”

“ Many people seem to think that all you need to do when planting a tree is to stick it in the ground—just any ground. This may be true of some kinds, but is certainly not true of the chestnut. For best growth and development the chestnut requires a fairly deep, well-drained soil, rich in mineral elements and humus, with a fair degree of moisture and plenty of sunlight. Two things chestnuts will not endure are shallow soil and drought, the latter often depending on the former. ”

“ This tree is the American chestnut. It grows to a large size, and if it were not for this disease, would be worthy of a place in any park. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent without success in endeavoring to exterminate the disease. Some of the introduced varieties are apparently exempt from this disease, but only the future can tell whether the chestnut will again become valuable in landscape work as well as in the raising of food and lumber. ”

“ We know that chestnut fruits or nuts do not travel far, like the seeds of willow, poplar, maple or ash, and therefore, in any given stand of chestnut, if we could go back from generation to generation into earlier time, most probably the majority of the trees would be found to have arisen from a common ancestor, although of course a few outsiders would have found their way into the group, carried by squirrels or other animals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chestnut is used in the preparation of many dishes, prized even by those in easy circumstances. In Italy the chestnut is also widely cultivated, and the nut is ground to form a kind of porridge known as polenta which is very extensively used as food. In the Apennines a cake made of chestnut flour and baked on hot stones is used under the name of necci. In Corea the chestnut is said to be a very extensive article of food, taking the place of the potato. ”

“ Mr. Hershey reports a new Heart nut, the Hershey, a seedling grown on his grounds at Downington, Pa. It is growing in a severe frost pocket but has never winter-killed or frost-killed. The nut is excellent. Bearing has been light due to crowding, which has been remedied by cutting down the trees around it.
CHESTNUTS
Most of the named Chestnuts are listed in Mr. Bixby's paper in the 1926 report and are growing on the Riehl farm at Godfrey, Ill. Experiments are still being carried on with hope of producing a blight resistant chestnut. ”

“ The chestnut is a long-lived tree, attaining an age of from 400 to 600 years, but trees over 100 years are usually hollow. It grows quickly, and sprouts from a chestnut stump (Coppice Chestnut) often attain a height of 8 feet in the first year. It has a fairly cylindrical stem, and often grows to a height of 100 feet and over. Coppice chestnut, that is, chestnut grown on an old stump, furnishes better timber for working than chestnut grown from the nut, it is heavier, less spongy, straighter in grain, easier to split, and stands exposure longer. ”