A Way Around the Chestnut Blight 
THE JAPANESE VARIETY AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR AMERICA'S DOOMED CHESTNUT 
TREES—A DWARF TREE THAT PRODUCES GIANT NUTS IN THE HOME GARDEN 
BY C. B. HORNOR 
Photograph by J. A. Walling 
D OES not the accompanying picture suggest that the passing 
of the native chestnut tree need not leave us altogether 
destitute and that in the Japanese chestnut we have a worthy 
successor, a tree that is highly ornamental, as well as useful —- 
one whose diminutive size requires but a small space of ground 
and which may be grown in almost any garden plot? 
The most casual excursion into the country shows (despite the 
unusually heavy yield and the 
inspiring sight of boys and girls 
returning from the hunt, heavy 
laden) that more than half of 
the chestnut trees are diseased 
—the dead and dying making 
a most unsightly contrast with 
their healthy brothers. 
Experts tell us that a 
remediless blight, produced 
by a fungus, is the cause of 
this mortality, and that the 
American chestnut is doomed. 
The chestnut bark disease, 
or chestnut blight, as it has 
been appropriately called, 
was first recognized by Dr. 
Murrill, of the New York 
Botanical Garden. It is a 
fungous disease that spreads 
in all directions through the 
tender inner bark, girdling 
the limb or trunk and caus¬ 
ing the death of the portion 
above the infection. Curi¬ 
ously enough the disease 
seems to have come from 
Japan, where it is less virulent. But the fungus that finds so 
secure a hiding place in the soft, rough-barked American tree 
finds the case very different with this smooth-barked congener. 
The blight so largely affecting the native chestnut tree at the 
present time has not taken hold of its Japanese rival, at least 
not in New Jersey. The individual trees are free from it, as are 
also the young trees in the nursery. The Japanese chestnut is 
a perfectly healthy tree; or perhaps we had better say that it is a 
highly resistant one. 
The tree in the picture is an American seedling, planted and 
raised from the nut and then grafted from the Japanese chestnut. 
Seen at a little distance, the cluster of burs looks like a large 
green ball, the burs are so compact; .and only as you get quite 
near do the divisions appear. Standing alone in an open space, 
in what would be considered a small garden, it gets full sunlight 
and air. 
It is under a high state of cultivation—good, sandy loam 
garden soil, well drained, and kept free from weeds. The 
appearance of the strawberry patch (from which, by the way, 
five hundred plants set out last April yielded in June seventeen 
quarts of fine strawberries) in front of the tree gives an idea 
of the condition of the soil—not a weed in it. 
In height this tree is ten feet; its diameter, one foot from the 
ground, six inches, and the space between the ground and the 
first branches, three and one half feet. 
The bark is hard and quite smooth, somewhat resembling the 
bark of the gum tree or the box maple in appearance. The burs 
are two and a half to three inches in diameter and grow on the 
branches in clusters of from ten to twenty. At the proper time 
they may be picked off with care, instead of being stoned or beaten 
off with sticks — “thrashed,” as 
the boys say. Each bur con¬ 
tains either two or three nuts 
—rarely, one or four. The 
nuts themselves are as large as 
small horse-chestnuts and very 
sweet and palatable — a nota¬ 
ble improvement on the na¬ 
tive, or American, chestnut. 
One curious thing about 
the Japanese tree is that it 
ripens its fruit by the heat 
and not by the cold; so that 
when the frost comes the nuts 
have all been gathered. 
When two years old this 
tree yielded two quarts of fine 
chestnuts; and now, at the 
age of six, it is weighted down 
with nearly two thousand 
burs, containing more than a 
bushel of nuts. 
The tree is very beautiful 
in appearance, so symmetrical, 
and showing its burs in such 
a highly ornamental way. 
The branches bend with the 
weight of the nuts; so, almost, as to need support — a sight worth 
going far to see. 
Surely, it is necessary for us to be not only exercised in mind 
about this question of the extinction of our chestnut trees; but 
it is necessary, as well, for us to take immediate action, and begin 
now, either by planting nuts just when it is time to select the 
most perfect ones, if the grafted trees are preferred, or, to buy and 
plant the young Japanese trees. This last would seem to be the 
better way, the results being quicker, and, no doubt, more certain. 
Let us plant the Japanese chestnut tree by all means. Let 
us plant it right away; either before the ground freezes, or in the 
spring, as soon as the ground can be worked. This will cause no 
greater waste of time than is occasioned by one of the bar¬ 
ren years that, from one cause or another, come to us quite 
often. 
The low height of the tree renders the nuts most accessible, 
and they commence bearing almost from the start. Almost 
anyone can spare the small space of ground, either in yard 
or garden, that it takes to grow a Japanese chestnut tree. 
And in two years from the time of planting they may gather 
nuts. 
Plant these trees and we will have, when the American trees 
are all dead, new and better ones to take their place. 
Plant a Japanese chestnut tree to take the place of the doomed American 
species—and incidentally get bigger, better nuts 
