Rev. Taylor: I could enlarge on that question just a little bit to tie in with what Mr. O'Rourke said. If the nurserymen are going to propagate seedling trees for the trade for some time yet, where should they be advised to obtain their seed to get the best possible seedling trees?
Mr. Gravatt: In a lot of our regional distributions we sent out mixtures. In other places we would send out related seedlings, as "MY," "MZ," or "MAX," to different individuals. We have advised all nurseryman, all of our cooperators, to eliminate the Japanese; eliminate the hybrids. It gets down to pure Chinese. We have also advised again and again to take out the more worthless trees and propagate seed from the beat. But there are a lot of hybrid seeds with mixed parentage going into nursery trees.
Mr. McDaniel: How many people are going to take out trees now when they can sell the seeds for at least 50 cents or maybe even $2.00 a pound?
Mr. Gravatt: That's it. However, you take any of those Chinese trees over there at the Eastern Shore Nurseries, for example—nuts from all 19 of them have been sent over here, and they are all good eating. I have been over a lot of the seedlings of Hemming's trees. Mr. Hemming has several hundred at his own place. I have been over other orchard plantings. There is lot of variability among those seedlings. They are not as uniform as the parent tree, for some reason. Why, I don't know.
Mr. Chase: Mr. Howell, as a nurseryman, has propagated the Chinese chestnut tree. Would you care to make a few comments? Mr. Howell has Howell's Nursery in Knoxville and at Sweetwater, Tennessee, and I believe has some of Mr. Gravatt's early seedling trees and has produced a great quantity of seedlings.
Mr. Bruce Howell: A good many years ago we got from the Department five trees, and they grew and have all borne good nuts, and all chestnuts we have propagated since have been grown from seed from those five trees, and most of them are pretty good. One is a small nut, and among more recent seedlings we have got two of them that don't bear at all, or haven't so far. Now, we have got a bunch of them where they were set several years ago in nursery rows. At each end of each row the trees there bear very nice nuts, and when you get out through that row, the crowded trees don't bear at all.
I think those seedlings and those trees practically all make fairly good nuts and some of them excellent. I have got some samples. About six years ago I got a pound of imported Japanese I planted. The third year they bore and they have done very well, and all of them are about the same size chestnuts. They are as good as any after they are roasted or boiled. That's about all. A good many years ago, I guess 30 years ago, I grafted Paragon chestnuts, and they did well until the blight.
Rev. Taylor: Does anybody else have this trouble? In North Central Tennessee we usually have a warm spell about the Middle of February, plowing time. We expect it every year. And then these Chinese chestnuts are the quickest trees to let the buds swell, and the bark softens up all the way to the ground on the young ones. Then we nearly always have a pretty hard freeze, afterward. So, for several years after our experimental planting was set out there they would get killed clear to the ground next year. Is that something others have the same experience with? How do you go at correcting that?
After our trees got to be three or four or five inches in diameter they didn't kill back that way. The bark seemed to be tougher.
Mr. McDaniel: That's very common experience in Tennessee and, I might say, in north Alabama.