632 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



Chestnut blooms in midsummer, and the profusion of pale golden 

 catkins makes the isolated tree a conspicuous object at that time. 

 Bloom is nearly always abundant, but the nut crop fails frequently. 

 Several accidents may happen, but the most frequent cause of scarcity 

 in the chestnut crop is a spell of rainy weather while the trees are in 

 bloom. The rain hinders proper pollenization. 



Many thousands of bushels of chestnuts are sent to market yearly 

 in the United States. The nuts are smaller but sweeter than those of 

 European chestnut. The largest part of the crop is collected from trees 

 in open ground. Those in dense forests bear only a few nuts at the top. 

 Open-grown trees develop enormous and shapely crowns; and it is not 

 unusual for farmers who value their nut bearing trees to pollard them. 

 This puts the tree out of consideration as a source of lumber. Its 

 branches multiply, but the trunk remains short. It is claimed that a 

 chestnut orchard of good form and in a region where large crops are 

 frequent, is more profitable than an apple orchard. The tree does not 

 demand rich land, but must have well-drained soil. It grows on rocky 

 slopes and ridges, and will prosper where most other valuable trees will 

 barely exist. 



It grows rapidly in its early life, but does not maintain the rate 

 many decades. Large trees are old. In the southern Appalachians 

 the ages of telegraph poles forty feet long and six inches in diameter at the 

 top range from forty-five to sixty-five years. Trees of round fence-post 

 size may grow in fifteen years. Few trees will produce posts more 

 quickly or in larger numbers per acre. In some instances nearly a 

 thousand saplings large enough for posts stand on a single acre. Sprout- 

 growth chestnut often forms nearly pure stands of considerable extent. 



The value of this tree is in its wood as well as its nuts. . More 

 than 500,000,000 feet of lumber are cut from it yearly. Long before it 

 was much thought of as a sawmill proposition, it was manufactured in 

 large amounts into rails and posts by farmers, particularly in New 

 England and in the Appalachian region. Axes, crosscut saws, mauls, 

 and wedges were the means of manufacture. Untold millions of fence 

 rails were split before wire fences were thought of. It is a durable wood, 

 made so by the tannic acid it contains. As fence rails, it was more 

 durable than the best oak, and where both were equally convenient, 

 farmers nearly always chose chestnut. On high and dry ridges a chest- 

 nut rail fence would last from twenty-five to fifty years, and in extreme 

 cases very much longer, even a full century it is claimed. 



Dry chestnut wood weighs 28.07 pounds per cubic foot, which 

 makes it a light wood. Its annual rings are as clearly marked as those 

 of any tree in this country. The springwood is filled with large open 



