DR. MORRIS: I think it is. All the chestnuts have rather coarse wood. It is strong, hard, durable, and valuable. This chinquapin wood is somewhat coarse grained, but, for comparison with the American chestnut, I don't know. I imagine it is finer grained.
DR. AUGUSTUS STABLER: I know that the chinquapin wood is very much tougher than the American chestnut.
DR. MORRIS: Oh, yes. You cannot break the branches so easily.
Here is a branch from a hybrid between a chinquapin and a common American chestnut (Castanea dentata). The leaves and bark, you will observe, are very much like those of the larger parent. The burs are borne singly or in small groups like those of the common chestnut, instead of being crowded in dense clusters like chinquapin burs. There are two or three nuts to the bur, while the chinquapin has normally, but one nut to the bur. This particular hybrid tree showed an interesting peculiarity. During the first two seasons of bearing it had but one nut to the bur, and this was of chinquapin character. In the third year its nuts were still borne singly, but they were lighter in color than before and oddly corrugated at the base. As the tree became older its chestnut parentage influence pre-dominated, and the tree began to bear two or three nuts to the bur, and more like chestnuts in character, becoming smooth again at the base.
I have a number of hybrids between chinquapins and various species and varieties of other chestnuts, but none of these as yet has produced nuts of marked value. There seems to be a tendency for the coarseness of the larger nuts to prevail in the hybrids, a certain loss of gentility beneath a showy exterior.
The next branch which I present for inspection is from a most beautiful member of the chestnut family, the alder-leaved chestnut (Castanea alnifolia). It is classed among the chinquapins in Georgia where the plant is nearly if not quite evergreen. At Stamford it is deciduous very late in the autumn, but sometimes a green leaf will be found in February, where snow or dead leaves on the ground have furnished a protecting covering. The notable value of this species is perhaps in its decorative character for lawns, although the nuts are first rate. The dark green brilliant leaves are striking in appearance, and the shrub is inclined toward a trailing habit, much like that of some of the junipers. This species is one of my pets at Merribrooke, and a perennial source of wonder that nurserymen have not as yet pounced upon it for purposes of exaggeration and misstatement in their annual catalogues.
All of these specimens shown today are from my country place at Stamford, Connecticut, where the mercury in the thermometer leads one to make quotations relating to the Eve of Saint Agnes; five or ten degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit occasionally, and once down to twenty degrees below without injury to any kind of chestnut so far as I could observe.
I cannot make an exhibit of the golden-leaved chinquapin, from the Pacific slope, because tragedy came to all of my little trees of this species, and like most of the Pacific slope plants they are not very joyous in the east. One lot lived through one winter at Merribrooke, but they were the first green things that my cows saw in the springtime, and further comment would be surplus. A single specimen took courage in its root and grew finely until autumn, but it was near a path and somebody pulled it up and left it lying stark naked on the ground. Botanists have recently made two species of the golden-leaved chinquapin, one of the species attaining a height of more than one hundred feet. If horticulturists will secure specimens of Castanopsis chrysophilla from the region of Mount Shasta in California I presume that this beautiful evergreen chinquapin may be taught to grow in some of our gardens. It is cultivated in the gardens of temperate Europe. In our north it should be planted close to a running brook, where the roots of young trees can carry water in plenty to the evergreen top while the ground is frozen hard in winter.
Our common chinquapin of the east is perhaps the one that will be cultivated most profitably in the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast. The beauty of freshly picked bush chinquapin nuts is not rivalled by that of any other kind of nut that I have ever seen. The exquisitely polished mahogany color comes out of a light downy cloud near the apex of the nut, dark as midnight for a moment and then shading through glows of lively chestnut until it dawns in a dreamy cream color at the base, with just enough suggestion of green to temper the reds.
If any gourmet with a color soul could serve each one of his friends to a plate of twenty freshly picked bush chinquapins along with two Bennett persimmons, and all resting upon late September leaves of tupelo or of sweet gum the friends would remain and live at his expense while the combination lasted.