THE PRESIDENT: I should like to ask Dr. Morris two questions, first, as to the possibility of utilizing the western tree chinquapins as stocks for the larger eastern chinquapins with nuts of chestnut size. Is there a possibility thus of getting a larger tree?
The second question is akin to that—utilization of the western tree as a stock for a hybrid chinquapin which might have arboreal possibilities and enough chinquapin qualities to be blight-resistant.
DR. STABLER: I am very much interested in Dr. Morris' proposition to produce dwarf chestnut trees by grafting on chinquapin stocks. Now, the difficulty I would expect to encounter is the same as when pecans are grafted on hickory, and when sweet cherries are grafted on Mahaleb, namely, that the root is not sufficiently vigorous to support the top. The fact that his grafts grew so tremendously when put on the chinquapin roots would look as though that might occur.
THE PRESIDENT: The audience seems to have run out of questions.
DR. MORRIS: All right, sir. First, how are we to grow chinquapins? Plant as soon as the nuts have fallen. Put them in a cage. I have wire cages that are about eight inches high, and about two feet wide and three feet long. I plant all the nuts there. They have wire mesh tops to keep out the rodents; that is the important thing. All nuts, I find, are best planted under conditions which simulate the normal conditions. Our nut trees are not as yet domesticated. They haven't learned bad habits, and they depend upon peculiarly favorable conditions of moisture, warmth and light. You plant a nut two inches below the surface, but nature doesn't do anything like that. Consequently, that nut is surprised, doesn't know what to do, and stays down there looking for something to happen. But if you put that nut so it is about half buried in the sand, so that it is damp on one side and the sun strikes it on the other side, and the frost and snow affect it naturally, the nut does just what you want it to do. It gets out of that uncomfortable condition and begins to grow. (Laughter.) When planting any nuts, I place them in the sand and leave one side exposed to light, moisture, frost, and the observation of visitors. When I have sprouted chinquapins in the north and there is danger of their not lignifying when the ground begins to freeze, I put a lot of little sticks upright amongst them, so that my mulch will not bear too heavily upon the chinquapins, and then cover them with several inches of oak leaves, or any good, strong leaves that will not pack too tightly. That mulch of loose leaves will protect the sprouted nuts perfectly during the winter in Connecticut, so they all start growing in the next spring.
Another way is to buy chinquapin stocks from any of the nurserymen, stocks two or three years old, which begin to bear when four or five years of age.
Professor Close, I think it was, who asked if the nuts were fertile, both the ones that developed without fertilization by any pollen and the ones that developed by stereochemic parthenogenesis—by the influence of neighboring pollen. Both sorts are fertile, and I presume that the effect of that would be similar to the effect of close inbreeding. In other words, we would have intensification of characteristics of some one parent. If you get parthenogenesis through two or three generations I presume that same peculiar feature of the original parent would become so intensified as to become a marked feature of the progeny. This offers a new line of cleavage for horticultural investigation. I am very glad that you raised that question.
Answering Mr. Littlepage, I have apparently managed to get some crosses back and forth between chestnuts, and oaks, and beech, this year. I have a number of those crosses now under way that are apparently good hybrids.
DR. STABLER: A cross between a chestnut and a beech?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, I think so. You see, I have got to wait a year or so until the plants develop later characteristics. All of these parent trees are pretty closely related, you see. The blooming period between the different ones may be as much as two or three weeks, or three months apart, in fact. I have cross pollinated hazels and oaks, this year. The way to do that is to find correspondents at the extreme limit of the blossoming range of the species, who will send pollen. For instance, Professor Hume, in Florida, sends me chestnut pollen in time to cross my oaks, and Professor Conser, of the University of Maine, has some beeches that blossom in time for me to cross with chinquapins and oak trees. That is one way to do it.