134 NUT GROWING 



ferent parts of the world twenty-six varieties and 

 species of chestnuts. Out of that lot I found four 

 kinds which were distinctly resistant. Castanea mol- 

 lissima from the northeastern Orient, our common 

 American chinkapins, Castanea pumila and its va- 

 riety arboriformis, and also the alderleaf chestnut, 

 Castanea alnifolia. The first of these, the Chinese 

 chestnut, had a large and rather coarse nut while 

 the other three have a quite small nut of very high 

 quality. Crosses were made with the idea of com- 

 bining the quality of a chinkapin with the size of a 

 Chinese chestnut. Crosses were also made between 

 the blight-resisting kinds and a kind which blights 

 readily, the American sweet chestnut. Hybrids with 

 the Japanese chestnut, sometimes bearing very beau- 

 tiful nuts, seemed to retain the coarseness of the 

 Japanese nut. Of crosses between the chinkapin and 

 the American sweet chestnut, those parents which 

 are more like the chinkapin parent in type seemed 

 to retain the blight resistance of that parent, while 

 those which assumed the type of the American chest- 

 nut appeared to lack blight resistance. A few of these 

 chinkapin-like hybrids have proven to be valuable for 

 the size and quality of the nut, for precocity in bear- 

 ing, and for blight resistance. Dr. Walter Van Fleet, 

 whose experimental work with chestnuts is very ex- 

 tensive, finds that at Washington the Japanese chest- 

 nuts are all more resistant than the Chinese ones. 

 This may be due to the carrying of spores by some 

 local borer, choosing one kind of tree. Hybrids 



