LUTHER BURBANK 



proved hybrid chestnuts on ordinary American 

 stock have proved enormously productive. 



It has been estimated that rocky and otherwise 

 useless hillsides may be made productive, where 

 practically nothing else could be grown that would 

 be of special value. 



IMPROVEMENTS TO BE MADE 



In continuing my experiments in developing 

 the chestnut, I have endeavored to effect wider 

 hybridizations. In particular I wish to cross the 

 hybrid chestnut with the evergreen golden chest- 

 nut (Castanopsis chrysophylls) of California, but 

 the wild trees of this species are so distant from 

 my grounds that I have not found it feasible to 

 gather their pollen, and the ones I have under 

 cultivation, although fifteen years of age, have not 

 yet blossomed. 



This golden chestnut is a very remarkable 

 species. On the heights of the Sierra Nevada 

 mountains it grows as a shrub only four or five 

 feet tall, much branched. These shrubs produce 

 nuts quite abundantly. Along the coast the same 

 tree grows to a height of 150 feet, with an immense 

 trunk. One can scarcely believe that the little bush 

 and the gigantic tree are of the same species. 



In point of fact there is a considerable differ- 

 ence in the constitution of the two varieties, the 

 giant from along the coast being rather tender, 



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