960 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



made into flour from which bread is made. They are 

 also served for food in a variety of other forms and pos- 

 sess a high nutritive vahie. 



There are a number of varieties of cuhivated chestnuts 

 mostly derived from the European chestnut. Until the 

 advent of the blight, chestnut orchards for the produc- 

 tion of nut crops offered a source of revenue from waste 

 land. Chestnut orchard trees must be grafted, as varie- 

 ties do not come true from seed. 



The chinquapin is the chestnut's nearest relative, na- 

 tive to this country, that assumes tree form. It is usually 

 a shrub and the leaves and burs cause it to resemble a 

 chestnut in miniature. The nuts are small and shaped 

 like an acorn, but are very sweet and delicately flavored. 

 It is possible that a variety of chestnut immune to the 

 bark disease may be bred by crossing the Japanese or 

 China species with the chinquapin, creating a variety 

 superior to any which now exists. 



Commercial Uses of Chestnut 



By p. L. Buttrick 



MOST people if asked to name the leading hard- 

 wood tree of the United States would prob- 

 ably say, "oak." But that is really no answer 

 for oak is not the name of a single kind of tree, but of 

 many. There are about sixty species of oak in the 

 United States, many of which are of economic impor- 

 tance and help to make up the total cut of that wood 



Courtesy Manual Arts Press, 



ENLARGED CROSS-SECTION OF CHESTNUT WOOD 



Line of demarcation between two annual rin^s of growth distinctly 

 shown. That portion with small pores and constituting lower one- 

 fourth of picture is summer wood of one annual ring, while the 

 upper tlirce-fourths of picture with large pores is the spring wood 

 of the next succeeding annual ring. 



which in 1910 was three billion feet. The next highest 

 name is maple which has a total cut of one billion feet, 

 but maple, like oak, is a generic name and covers many 

 different trees. Yellow poplar, better known as the tulip 

 tree to most people, has a cut of about seven hundred mil- 

 lion. Red gum and chestnut follow with about six hun- 

 dred million each. If we include the vast amount of 

 chestnut which is cut for shingles, telephone and tele- 

 graph poles, railroad ties, piles, fence posts, mine props 



and cordwood for the manufacture of tannic acid and 

 paper pulp, none of which are included in the six hundred 

 million feet of lumber, it is probably safe to say that 

 chestnut has the largest cut of any single species of hard- 

 wood in America, for no such enormous amount of ma- 

 terial not sawed into lumber is cut from any of the other 

 hardwoods mentioned. Aside from the amount of its 

 cut, it is certainly fair to consider chestnut as one of the 

 leading hardwoods of America. 



It also has other distinctions, one being a universal 

 name, something of which few trees can boast. A chest- 

 nut tree is always a chestnut tree no matter where it 

 grows. Contrast this with such a tree as the longleaf 

 pine, surely a distinctive enough tree for a distinctive 

 name, yet it has twenty-seven recognized ones. Even our 

 old standby, the white pine, is occasionally found masquer- 

 ading as the Weymouth pine. Chestnut has even given 

 its name to other trees. We have a chestnut oak and a 

 horse chestnut. The first was named because of the re- 

 semblance of its leaves to its namesake, the second be- 

 cause its fruits resemble to a degree those of the true 

 chestnut. 



It is most numerous and important in the Southern 

 -Appalachian Mountains, where in the State of North 

 Carolina it forms 27 per cent of the total stand, and is the 

 most numerous tree in the forest, occasionally forming 

 almost pure stands, although generally growing in mix- 

 lure with other hardwoods such as oaks and tulip pop- 

 lars. Conditions are much the same in eastern Tennes- 

 see and southwestern Virginia. In these States most of 

 the stand is composed of virgin timber, but outside of the 

 Appalachians, most of the chestnut is second growth and 

 is apt to be composed of sprouts from old stumps, often 

 several generations having grown up and been cut from 

 the original seedling stump. Here as elsewhere chest- 

 nut is apt to have, for its companions, various of the 

 oaks. 



No reliable estimate has ever been made of the total 

 stand of chestnut in the United States. It is doubtful 

 if it exceeds 30,000,000,000 feet and is probably nearer 

 20,000,000,000. The bulk of the supply, as might be ex- 

 pected, is in the Southern Appalachians. North Carolina 

 alone has a stand of 3,375,000,000 feet. Kentucky is esti- 

 mated to have between 3 and 4 billion feet. It it doubt- 



