[Footnote 3: 28 trees planted in 1926 and 16 planted in 1935, at spacing of 25 to 40 feet.]
[Footnote 4: 274 trees planted in 1938 and 60 in 1940, at spacing of 25 feet on square.]
The yield's produced in the 1938 planting have been outstanding, as indicated by the data in Table I, The trees began bearing when younger and developed heavier production than those of the 1926 planting, whether judged by age of tree or years of bearing. Many of the trees have produced nuts of outstanding size, attractiveness, eating quality, and keeping quality. There has been the usual degree of variation common to any collection of seedlings, but the best trees in this planting have been superior to any previously seen. Nut size has varied from 23 to more than 100 to the pound; the color of the nuts has varied from light tan to deep mahogany, and a few are nearly black. All have been of good eating quality. The keeping quality has varied materially, some keeping very well and others quite poorly.
Bur opening, has likewise varied so that at one extreme the nuts drop entirely free from the burs on some trees and at the other extreme the burs drop with the nuts in them and considerable work is required to remove the nuts. It is out of this group of trees that the three seedlings have been selected that the U. S. Department of Agriculture is considering worthy of variety status. These have not yet been officially released and no official description is yet available. The yield data for these three selected Seedlings are given in Table II.
Table II. Yield data by years, of three seedlings tentatively proposed for variety status, Philema, Georgia.
————————————————————————————————————- Tree Proposed Yield in Pounds by Years Total yield No. Nuts (in Lbs.) per Lb. ———————————————————- No. Name 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 from Planting ————————————————————————————————————- 7880[5]Meiling .2 3.6 20.9 36.9 23.9 73.1 36.9 195.5 38-43 7919 Kuling 4.0 3.8 5.8 6.5 13.8 34.2 50.2 38.2 168.5 35-43 7930 Nanking .1 3.8 28.0 37.8 1.0 87.7 54.6 213.0 30-43 ————————————————————————————————————-
[Footnote 5: Meiling ("Beauty") is the first name of Mme. Chiang
Kai-shek.]
The trees of the "FP" designation and, of other species were grown to fruiting, but have since been removed or topworked in entirety because of their lack of desirable characteristics and because they produced pollen for cross-pollination which would result in undesirable progeny when the Castanea mollissima nuts were used for seed. Furthermore, a number of trees of the three-letter designations have been removed or topworked because they produced very small nuts, or showed poor keeping quality, or because of some other undesirable characteristic. Therefore, the nuts now being produced in this experimental orchard are of pure C. mollissima inheritance of the best type, and, as such, represent some of the best and purest seed nuts available in this country today. This procedure is being continued so as to maintain the quality of the nuts for seed purposes at its present standard.
Unfortunately, many of the nuts offered in the general trade for seed purposes at the present time are coming from orchards composed of a mixture of species or types comparable to the 1938 Philema planting before culling. This is very undesirable because of the great variability in the nuts produced by trees with such an origin. When grafted or budded trees of the newer and improved varieties are available to orchardists chestnut growing for nut production may be based on the same sound practices as the other fruit industries.
In the topworking of "FP" trees at Philema with scions from other strains of Castanea mollissima the degree of incompatibility has been so great, that the scion tops will have either blown out or died at the end of four or five years from grafting. At the present time this failure can only be attributed to the fact that the stocks were of mixed ancestry. On the other hand, scions of pure C. mollissima placed on the same stock strains have made good unions and are entirely normal after as long as 13 years from grafting. This problem of incompatibility between stock and scion is one that yet remains to be completely solved.