THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
131 
COMMON THINGS 
By E. D. Bunnell 
llii\ e been a reader of your paper lor more Ilian twenly 
years. Have Irequenlly felt moved to eonlribule some- 
Ihing, but the impulse would pass under a rush of work 
and nothing came of it. I have always found it interest¬ 
ing to read the observations and experiences of practical 
nurserymen and landscape men. It is these every day 
])ietures carefully and accurately drawn that we appre¬ 
ciate the most. We like to hear as much about new 
uses and applications of common varieties, as about some 
new things (or some one fancies new, because he has 
just gotten acquainted with it himself, although some of 
us may have known about it for years). There is a 
rt'ason w hy some things are common—common because 
good. If 1 should head my article “California Privet” 
but few would notice it. . Anything written on so com¬ 
monplace a subject wmuld be considered unworthy of 
attention. Yet we must give attention to these things. 
Privet is now a necessity quite as much as shade trees 
on our streets. 
I have observed in the cities of our section such as 
(Jersey City) how greatly privet hedges are prized. 
Little grass plots no larger than the surface of a dining 
room table are neatly defined by an extremely well 
clipped hedge of California privet. Some of these small 
lawns extend across one, two or three terraces leading 
down from the front steps to the side walk (JerseyCity 
Heights). In such a case wherever the crest of the ter¬ 
race occurs some ornamental projection is formed neatly 
clipped in the green of the hedge. Where this sort of 
decoration is started in a block, or square, it follows like 
an epidemic down the entire row. In such a case it is a 
pleasure to stand at a corner and look down that block, 
and observe how each neighbor has tried to out-do the 
next by clipping his privet to a more perfect line or to 
some fancy design. The clipping is almost always done 
by the man of the house, who becomes a past master at 
his work. No nursery employee could do so well, no 
professional hedge trimmer could better the job, for it 
could not be done better. How much these people prize 
these green hedges can be seen in the way they take care 
of them. They prize them the more because the plant 
is almost an evergreen and seldom loses foliage until 
January. Of course the cold of December purples up 
the foliage, but any tree or plant that holds its foliage 
well into December is bound to be popular in the cities. 
Twenty years ago there were no hedges there worthy of 
the name. The material used for hedging then was 
very expensive and not very good, hence little used. 
As w e go into the southern cities we observe the smal¬ 
ler light green leaf of the Amoor River privet which does 
not purple in the Winter’s chill. Some strains of this 
are hardy in our latitude (New York City) and no doubt 
in a few years will supplant the older variety. (Some 
ten or twelve winters ago all the California privet hedges 
in this section froze to the ground). 
The Oriental Plane is another common but very good 
thing in our northern city streets. Did you ever notice 
how late they hold their foliage? Long after the pop¬ 
lars and maples are bare the Planes are bright and 
green. We who live in the country do not readily ap- 
pr(‘eiate such an advantage. Many city dwellers look 
longingly on the foliage of their Plane trees and lastly 
the privet wliieh is generally looking poorly hy January, 
and then prepare for two months of dismal cold and more 
or less snow and iee. We should try to occupy the view- 
point of our customers if we ever ean hope to do them ■. 
lasting benefit. 
DISEASE-RESISTANT CHESTNUTS RY PLANT 
BREEDING 
The possibilty for continued grow th of chestnut trees 
in the United States, in the face of the rapid spread of 
the destructive chestnut blight, may depend mainly upon 
replacing of the susceptible native trees by disease-re¬ 
sistant strains and hybrids bred from Asiatic stock. This 
is pointed out by plant pathologists of the U. S. Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture who have made exhaustive studies 
of the disease in field and laboratory during the last five 
years. The chestnut blight, which is estimated to have 
caused already from sixty to one hundred millions of 
dollars damage in the eastern United States, and wdiich 
is rapidly exterminating the Ameriean chestnut, came 
from eastern Asia on nursery stock.* The disease is 
common in both China and Japan, but in those countries 
causes relatively much less damage than in America. In 
both Asia and America the parasitic fungus causes 
cankers on chestnut bark, but in the American chestnut 
these cankers soon completely girdle the tree, and invari¬ 
ably cause death. In China and Japan, however, the 
trees commonly remain alive and productive for many 
years although cankered, the cankers seldom growing 
fast enough to girdle the trees 
The specialists have identified seven species of the 
genus of fungi to which the organism causing chestnut 
blight belongs, five of which now^ exist in the United 
States. None of these causes disease, except the one 
which causes the chestnut blight. Fortunately, the 
chestnut blight fungus rarely grows on trees other than 
the chestnut; during their studies the specialists were 
able to find but four such specimens—three of these w ere 
oaks, and one a maple. Inoculation experiments indi¬ 
cated that although the fungus can be made to grow^ ou 
trees other lhan chestnut, it usually is but slightly para¬ 
sitic in such cases and seldom injures the trees greatly. 
In their age-long struggle with the blight the Japanese 
and Chinese chestnuts have acquired a high degree of 
resistance to it, and this fact is being utilized by the 
specialists in breeding resistant chestnut trees lor Amer¬ 
ican use. Hybrids between the highly resistant Japanese 
chestnut and our native chinquapin have been raised in 
considerable numbers. They quickly lorm handsome 
dw arf trees, bearing at an early age profuse crops of nuts 
of excellent quality, five or six times the size ol those ol 
the wild chinquapin parent, and ripening w^eeks before 
any other chestnuts. So far.these trees show^ a very high 
degree of disease resistance. The second generation.of 
hybrids, grown from self or chance pollinated nuts, 
appear quite as good as their parents, which is an 
important feature when the cost of propagation of nut 
