Mr. Rush: We don't know; it's a native tree; it's a hybrid.
Mr. Lake: It's a supposed hybrid.
Mr. Reed: Yes, the chestnut and chinkapin grow close together.
The Chairman: What is the form of the nuts?
Mr. Rush: Round like a chinkapin. I think it was a chestnut on a chinkapin.
Mr. Lake: If it is a chinkapin, what is there to indicate that there is any chestnut blood in it?
Mr. Rush: The size of the tree and the fact that the nut matures with the chestnut. The chinkapin is about three weeks earlier than this variety of chinkapin.
Mr. Reed: That photograph is typical of the Rush hybrid chinkapin. We take up the butternut now. So far as we know, there are no named varieties of the butternut; there cannot be until some good individual tree is found which is of sufficient merit to entitle it to propagation by budding and grafting. It is one of the best known nuts in our field, especially in New England; it is more common there than it is further south.
This slide shows the native butternut in the forests of southern Indiana near the Ohio River. Of course, those trees in forests like that don't mature many nuts. It is not in the forests, ordinarily, that you will find individual trees of sufficient merit to entitle them to propagation. It is the tree in the open that has had greater opportunities than are afforded in the forest.
Mr. Lake: Are there any coniferous trees in that forest?