The combination of qualities of the cultivated filbert from Europe and our wild Wisconsin filbert results in an extremely hardy plant, with characteristics sometimes like the former, sometimes like the latter. Many times, the hybrid combines the best of each. I am testing these for field culture, to be cared for much as corn is. I expect to have three experimental farms before very long, demonstrating the success of commercial orchards of these hybrids which I call "hazilberts." "Hazilberts" is a word I coined by borrowing from the names of its parents. It has been readily accepted by the lay public and is easily understood to refer to hybrids between hazels and filberts. Furthermore, I was able to obtain a U. S. trademark on this for application to these plants.
Hazilberts are all subject to the native hazel blight, ~Cryptosporella anomala~, a fungus infection. They are also susceptible to another blight similar to the bacteriosis of the Persian walnut. More serious than these, though, is the damage caused by a curculio, which cuts down heavily the production of nuts if measures are not taken to combat them. Breeding has demonstrated that some hybrids are so resistant to the inroads of this pest that they may almost be considered immune, especially when they are interplanted with other hazilberts which do attract curculios and so act as trap-plants. In this way, the insects are encouraged to concentrate in one place where they may be poisoned, thus protecting the main-crop plants. Since pollinators are required for filberts anyhow, the pollinators may be the trap-plants. This is actually the case in the initial plantings. Clean cultivation will also do away with many of the curculios, since they depend on unbroken soil in the fall for their metamorphosis.
The presence of blight makes it unwise to depend on a single-trunked tree and I find that great productivity can be maintained when the plant is allowed to grow in stools having from three to five trunks. The management of such plants is like that of raspberry bushes, except that instead of thousands of plants per acre to be cared for, with hazilberts there are only 145, 15 x 20 feet apart.
Judging by the number of nuts on small plants, one may reasonably expect crops to average one-half ton of nuts per acre. The hybrids I have grown so far have been self-husking. The size of their nuts is good, some measuring an inch in diameter. For commercial purposes, however, the large size is not particularly desirable nor necessary.
In conclusion, I want to say that there is a very promising situation developing for these nuts commercially. Not only are these hazel-filbert hybrids easily planted, but they are easy to propagate, since they are one of very few species of nut trees which are easily propagated by layers and root sprouts. Out of more than 600 hazilberts which I planted in the fall of 1945, only about a dozen were dead in June of 1946, which gives you a practical idea of the ease and safety of transplanting them.
The 1946 Status of Chinese Chestnut Growing In the Eastern United States
By Clarence A. Reed U. S. Plant Industry Station, Beltsville, Maryland
Introduction
The Chinese chestnut, Castanea mollissima, now dominates interest among well-informed chestnut planters of the eastern United States almost to the exclusion of other species. Since its introduction in 1906, it has had but one important competitor, the Japanese chestnut, C. crenata. Among the world's most important producers of tree chestnuts, only these two species are effectively resistant to blight. However, the Japanese chestnut lacks the palatability to which Americans are accustomed and for all practical purposes it has been rejected in this country. Many small plantings still survive; but this species serves better for shade and ornamentation than for food production.
Description of the Chinese Chestnut