Mr. Bregger: I would like to ask, if planters for some years yet will have to rely on seedlings, is there a chance that from certain parents or certain varieties we can get a larger percentage of good seedlings than from others? How much has it been studied and is there a known result from the parent trees in the percent of what their seedlings can do?
Dr. Crane: I wish I could answer that one. It is a matter of time, to find out the seedling characteristics reproduced by a certain descendant. But we know that there is a difference in uniformity of trees in the way they grow, but as far as bearing is concerned, and the type of nut produced, we haven't had enough time yet.
It's just like this: We have made selections for rootstocks in which we have selected trees that were good, strong and vigorous—the most vigorously growing trees that we have known about, and yet at the same time produced a small nut or medium-sized nut that we could use for the production of rootstocks. And we have made progress on that, and we have demonstrated that there is a very marked difference between the graftability or budability of seedlings from certain parent trees. We have demonstrated that some varieties are much easier to propagate than are others. But as for the proper combinations of stock and scion, we still haven't got enough data to recommend any. We know that there are differences, but it is going to take quite a long while, at least four or five years or more, before we know.
Now, there is just one other thing that comes up on propagation. We have found that if you bench-graft and make the graft into the transition zone between root and top just like the old method that the apple propagator used when he piece-root grafted and then plant deep, you can get a hundred per cent of the grafts to grow. In such cases the scion may root and the top will be on its own roots.
Well, there are a lot of these tricks to learn as time goes on. I don't think that we should worry too much about this graft union problem. We know that this Carr variety is a bear-cat. It is the one that gave us so much trouble. When we tried to propagate that one we had a real, nasty cat by the tail. But on the other hand, in answer to Dr. MacDaniels' question if we go out to Dr. J. Russell Smith's plantings up at Round Hill (Virginia), we can see a lot of the oldest grafted trees that I know of anywhere in the country, and the unions are just as smooth and just as slick as anyone would want to see. They are not 20 years old; I don't think there was ever a mollissima chestnut grafted 20 years ago. The first grafting that I know of was about 15 years ago, maybe 18.
Mr. Stoke: In 1932.
Mr. R. C. Moore: Thomas Jefferson grafted European chestnuts.
Dr. Crane: No, I am talking about Chinese chestnuts. We didn't get in any Chinese chestnuts until 1906. We have this problem of incompatibility or graft union trouble, in apples, but do you hear anybody hollering about it? We have it in peaches, plums and cherries. One of the most important diseases they have out in the Pacific Northwest and California on Persian walnuts, is what is called "black line disease." We mustn't get excited about graft union failure. That has been used, in my opinion, by a lot of people, to discourage the propagating of grafted chestnuts. There are thousands of people in the United States who are spending good money for seedling trees, and some of them are going to get stung. We in the Northern Nut Growers Association are going to have this thing backfire on us, just as true as I tell you. I know there are some nurserymen today that are planting unknown chestnut seeds, and they are selling the trees as Chinese chestnut. They are planting seed out of mixed orchards, too, that have C. seguinii and C. henryi and C. crenata trees in them. The C. crenata Japanese has been introduced in the United States for over 70 years and it has never made the grade.
You know, there has been many a thing that has been promoted in the United States—big for a few days and then she backfired, and then it took the industry 50 or a hundred years to recover. You can sell people gold bricks once, but you can't sell them gold bricks all the time!
Mr. McCollum: Last year after Mr. Hemming's speech—you know, he is the nurseryman who sells seedlings over on the Eastern Shore—I asked him if he had been selling those long enough to have heard from customers. "Yes," he said he had, "all satisfied." Now, I don't know anything about that.