Arthur H. Graves, Curator, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, says: "We are breeding chestnuts for the purpose of obtaining a disease-resistant timber tree stock similar to the old chestnut tree which has now nearly disappeared on account of the blight. We started breeding chestnuts here at the Botanic Garden in 1930, and now after thirteen years of work, have on our plantation at Hamden, Conn., Litchfield, Conn., where the White Memorial Foundation is cooperating with us, and Redding Ridge, Conn., where Mr. Archer M. Huntington and the Connecticut Agr. Exp't Station are cooperating, about 1000 hybrids, a large number of combinations of Chinese, Japanese and American chestnuts, many of them now in the third generation from the beginning of the breeding period in 1930.
"We are carrying out our breeding program in the following way:
"We have selected the Chinese and Japanese species to cross with the American because the Asiatic species are disease-resistant, and we hope to incorporate this quality of disease-resistance with the tall timber growth of the American. We find that the Chinese are in general more disease-resistant than the Japanese. Other stocks which have been incorporated in our hybrids are the European C. sativa, the southern chinquapins C. pumilia, C. ozarkensis, C. floridana, and Dr. Van Fleet's old hybrid, presumably of C. crenata and C. pumila, which goes under the name of S8, and C. seguinii. After the hybrids become old enough, we inoculate the tallest of them with the blight fungus in order to get an index of their disease resistance. The most disease-resistant are bred together and of their offspring the tallest are selected, inoculated, and the most disease-resistant are bred together again. For example, this year we had 350 hybrids from last year's breeding experiments set out in a special nursery at Hamden and carefully tended during the season. Of these 350 we have selected 50 which are the tallest and straightest, that is, 20 inches and over. The others were sent to Washington, D. C., where the Division of Forest Pathology, Department of Agriculture, is working along a similar line, but with more attention to the nut phase of the problem.
"Our ultimate aim, of course, is to establish a race of chestnut trees which shall replace our now practically extinct American chestnut. The loss in money value from this timber tree has amounted to millions of dollars in comparison with which the value of its nut crops is very small indeed.
"However, we are interested in the nut problem, and whenever any particularly fine nuts appear we note the fact. We have now a strain of Chinese chestnut which has not yet come into bearing which we believe will have nuts as sweet as the old American chestnut, but much larger."
With this forward-looking note we close our report. We have a foundation upon which to build that is substantial and tried. The pioneering work of a patient, far-sighted, and distinguished group of workers has shown us much of what to do and what not to do. It is now up to us, the farmers, the planters, to multiply their work and continue it.
Side-lights on the 1943-4 Survey
Very many interesting bits of information have been included in the survey reports; so many that the committee has regretfully omitted some that hardly seemed properly to belong with the material of a survey, which after all must have some limits. One such item is from J. C. McDaniel, of Haines City, Fla., and has a special interest for members of this Association. He says:
"Perhaps you will be interested in data on one of America's largest Chinese chestnut trees, even if it does grow in Florida, at Monticello. It stands adjacent to a lot in which the late J. F. Jones had a nursery for a short time in the early years of this century, and apparently was planted at that time, around forty years ago. The trunk is now more than 25 inches in diameter below where it divides 6 feet above the ground. From this level, the tree branches profusely and has a symmetrical, rounded crown. It is healthy, not having a sign of the bark disease, although a native chinkapin 100 feet away is badly infested. It has abundant bloom and sets heavy crops of burrs but, lacking another variety for pollination, the number of nuts matured is small. Nuts are about average size for the species, of typical sweet flavor, and separate readily from the pellicle. Many of them become infested, before ripening, with a fungus which rots the kernel, apparently the same one which infests chestnuts and chinkapins at Savannah and Albany, Georgia. Mr. Paul Goldberg, of Monticello, the present owner, states that the tree has been bearing annually during the twenty years his family has owned it."