Dr. Overholser: Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question, whether these three seedlings to which they propose to give variety status have been propagated in sufficient number that they are able to give distribution in other areas.
Mr. Hardy: Dr. Overholser, they are not available yet in quantity. That same answer is part of the answer I wanted to make to Dr. MacDaniels. The present situation in the chestnut industry is that there are very few nurserymen who know how to propagate nursery grafted trees successfully. There is going to have to be quite a bit of work done on that. If some of you here know how to do it, I would like to know, myself. There are a lot of nurserymen who would like to know, according to the reports I have, how to graft or bud a nursery chestnut tree.
As long as the situation is that way I would say to recommend seedling trees because of their low price, but—and every grower who has trees can fall in line with this—the seeds should be from properly culled-out orchards of the highest type, leaving nothing in there producing nuts or pollen but what is the highest type. I think all of you who have more than one type of chestnut in your plantings should cull them all down to the pure Castanea mollissima. I don't mean by cutting out the whole tree, but go ahead and top-work them. If they won't take the top, then cut them out. But if you can top-work them and the grafting is good, you can increase your planting of good trees in that manner.
The improved quality of the seed will improve the quality of seedlings going to the buyer, and the chances of a higher percentage of good seedlings showing up will be greater. I think it will improve the industry through a period of years.
Dr. MacDaniels: I think I agree with his position. In fact, that's exactly what we are telling the inquiries that come in: At the present state of our knowledge, better try seedling trees.
But I didn't hear anybody get up and say they had an orchard of 20-year-old grafted chestnut trees. I have tried to get them, I have grafted successfully, I suppose, 7 or 8 different varieties on many different Chinese stocks that I have bought, or had given to me, and numbers of grafted trees. I have nothing left. They grow fine, 7 or 8 feet the first year, 3 or 4 feet the next year, then they go along for a while and then they die. In other words, there is an unsolved problem there, so that it seems to me at the present state of our knowledge we had better admit it and say, "If you are an amateur, you better get the best seedling trees that you can and wait awhile."
Mr. J. C. Moore: I just want to give some data on some of the class work at Auburn with Chinese chestnuts. We were studying Chinese seedlings, and we attempted to bud those Chinese chestnut seedlings, and on some of the larger seedlings we top-worked. We had some 3-year-old seedlings, and we top-worked the limbs. We put in patch buds, and we put in T-buds or shield buds, and in practically every case on some of the trees the buds stuck beautifully.
In June and again in August, with another class, we had the same results, either with T-bud or shield bud or patch bud. Some of the seedlings wouldn't take the buds at all. I can't think why one seedling would take 100 per cent of the buds and another seedling growing right by it wouldn't take any buds.
Mr. Weber: The oldsters here will remember Colonel C. K. Sober, one of our former members who propagated what he later named the Sober's Paragon chestnut. It was a grafted tree and apparently it was grafted successfully on native stocks, and it grew until the blight got it.
Dr. MacDaniels: I am not talking about European or American, I am talking about Chinese chestnuts.