MR. STOKE: I noticed them grafting chestnut trees several feet from the ground. Why are they doing that?
DR. GRAVATT: They are doing it in order to develop a quick supply of scion wood. But the procedure is bad. It is much better to graft close to the ground, and mound it up with dirt. The blight gets in below the graft if the graft is high on the trunk. They have had success grafting below the ground level and find they may get a shoot six feet high the first year.
DR. MACDANIEL: How about the incompatibility in the graft? Does that show up much?
DR. GRAVATT: We don't know yet, because they always get a certain number of failures. I looked over quite a lot of grafting of Chinese chestnuts on Japanese-European hybrids, and they are thriving. After four years they are already regular trees with big crops on them.
TUESDAY MORNING SESSION
PRESIDENT BEST: Our first paper is "Rooting Chestnuts from Softwood
Cuttings" by Roger W. Pease.
Rooting Chestnuts from Softwood Cuttings
ROGER W. PEASE, West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station,
Morgantown, W. Va.
Some 15 or 20 years ago the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station undertook to develop, if possible, blight resistant chestnuts from American chestnut stock. With the passage of time the approach to the problem has changed. During the early days little thought was given to procedures for propagation, but recently the emphasis has shifted toward methods for propagation when and if there are found hardy, timber-type, blight-immune chestnuts of any species.
The practicability of budding or grafting chestnuts is debatable. We are leaving budding and grafting to experienced workers throughout the country and are endeavoring to develop a method for rooting chestnuts from softwood cuttings. Results so far are encouraging, but the work is still in the experimental stage. We do not advise anyone to start rooting chestnuts on a commercial basis, but we hope that further experimental work will be done by interested agencies.