DR. CRANE: That's the way it is with us. Anybody in the audience that has an opinion that they think seedlings are better than grafted trees?
MR. CALDWELL: I was going to say seedlings are better, but I think this is one thing everybody should realize: The emphasis has been based on early production. In many cases we have found in forest trees that early seed production doesn't necessarily mean heavy late seed production. Some of those that didn't produce early went ahead and 40 or 50 years later produced heavily. So be a little bit careful when you start swinging too heavily on early production.
DR. CRANE: Yes, but, Dr. Caldwell, we in the United States haven't time to wait. We haven't time to wait.
MR. CALDWELL: You are going to have to take it.
DR. CRANE: It's just like Mr. Wilson said. He planted seedlings in 1948, and he is telling me that most of them haven't come into bearing, so he is going to ply the axe or top work them. He hasn't time to wait. He's got to make his bread and butter out of that, and when it comes to growing nuts, we can't wait 40 or 50 years for a tree to come in. That might be all right for posterity, but we have got to be sure of it, or our posterity is not going to be able to pay the national debt.
DR. MACDANIELS: According to the experience I have had, the chestnut is only a little more hardy than the peach, and behaves pretty much the same as regards wood injury. At 30° below zero the trees have been killed outright or to the ground. At about 25° below they will black heart with killing of sapwood and serious injury to the bark. At 20 they will survive. This experience involves perhaps 125 seedling trees from various sources, but mostly from the U.S.D.A. It is quite likely that there may be more hardier strains that will withstand these low temperatures. The other point is the matter of grafted trees. It is my opinion that the failure of the graft is a form of cold injury related to delayed maturity of the tissues at the graft union. Certainly failure of grafts is much more persistent in the north than in the south.
My experience has been that I haven't been able to keep grafted trees.
They appear to thrive for three or four years and then die. I have tried
it over and over again. It appears that the grafted tree in Georgia and
Virginia is one thing. In New York it's another.
MR. WALLICK: I have never bought a grafted chestnut tree that grew. They all die. And seedlings mostly do not have the kind of nuts you want. Also they may be susceptible to disease.
DR. MCKAY: I want to make one observation about our experience at Beltsville on the question of seedlings versus varieties as regards bearing. We topworked scions of some of our good varieties, like Nanking and Meiling, onto large seedlings we have at Beltsville that are poor bearers. These grafted portions in the top of these trees under poor conditions—our soil is poor at Beltsville—set tremendously heavy crops, but the nuts are smaller in size than normal, and therefore the crop is not as desirable as it would be if it were grown under good conditions. The point is that those varieties bear even under poor conditions. Bearing is a variety characteristic, and wherever it grows it will bear though it may not produce a good-sized nut.
MR. PEASE: I believe what's coming out in this discussion on bearing is also true in hardiness, growth, and any characteristic we want. We may select seeds from trees at an elevation of 6,000 feet, and still have some which will be not hardy.