re nuts.

In 1940, I crossed the pistillate blossoms of this tree with pollen from
a Chinese variety called Carr, resulting in half a dozen nuts which I
planted.

Since the chestnuts in these parts do not bloom usually until early July
we can expect chestnuts to be a more reliable crop than butternuts, for
instance, which bloom very early in the spring about May 1 to 15th.

Having had this reward for my efforts I took much more interest in
chestnut growing and ordered trees of the Chinese varieties, Castanea
mollissma from J. Russell Smith, H. F. Stoke, and John Hershey. Some of
these were seedlings and some were grafted trees, not over a dozen of
them alive today and none have produced mature nuts. Seemingly they have
not been hardy although they have grown large enough to produce both
staminate and pistillate blooms; they have never winter killed back to
the ground, however.

Also, I have been planting nuts from all sources from which I could
obtain them, mostly of the Chinese chestnut type. Some of these nuts
were results of crosses, and showed their hybridity in the young
seedlings that resulted there from. Today I have perhaps 150 of such
young seedlings which I am pampering with the hope of getting something
worthwhile from them. One of the big thrills of chestnut growing was the
result of a chestnut that I picked up from a plant that was no higher
than 2 feet, growing at Beltsville, Maryland in the government testing
ground there, in 1937. My records show that this plant began to bear
nuts in 1943 and have subsequently borne several crops in between the
times that it was frozen to the ground and grew up again, which happened
at least three times. Like most chestnuts this one has to be pollinated
by taking the staminate bloom from a dwarfed chestnut nearby whose bloom
coincides with the blossoming of the female flowers of this Chinese
hybrid. Chestnuts rarely set any nuts that produce mature seed from
their own pollen but depend on cross-pollination. The nut from this
hybrid is also the largest of any that I have grown and to my taste is a
palatable one. It may not rank among the best ones of known varieties
today, but for our climate I would consider it unusually large and good.
Experimentally, I have been able to produce new plants from this tree by
layering young shoots coming from the roots. This generally requires two
years to make a well-rooted plant before they are cut off and
transplanted. This alterna