s and produces better crops along the Atlantic Coast than inland,
thus indicating the need of this species for a long growing season and
freedom from late spring and early fall frosts. In the plantings in
Georgia, from Atlanta to the southward, no loss of crop from late spring
frosts has ever been noted. In the Gulf States and northward along the
Atlantic seaboard the Chinese chestnut tree is vigorous, healthy, and
productive, coming into bearing at a fairly early age and thereafter
producing regular crops. The trees grow to be rather large in size,
developing a somewhat rounded form with a spread of branches about equal
to the height. Without pruning when young many sprouts usually develop
near the ground so that the mature tree has numerous trunks of about
equal size, with the lower lateral branches resting on the ground.

Nearly all of the Chinese chestnut trees being grown at the present time
are seedlings and exhibit a wide range of tree and nut characteristics.
A few trees develop a somewhat more upright type of growth than that
commonly seen, but this type is generally less productive than trees of
more spreading habit, and the nuts are smaller and less desirable. Some
trees showing the most upright type of growth originated from nuts
imported from the more northern provinces of China and may represent a
distinct strain or form of _Castanea mollissima_. The degree of
incompatibility exhibited when southern China strains are grafted on
northern China strains would indicate the same conclusion.
Unfortunately, several different species or strains have been included
in the plantings of most cooperators with the U. S. Department of
Agriculture so that seedlings resulting from cross-pollination of these
types may exhibit an even wider range of characteristics and performance
from the standpoint of commercial production than is commonly seen at
present. A few of these hybrids may be superior to pure _C. mollissima
seedlings_ in certain important respects because of hybrid vigor, but
taken as a whole the best types of _C. mollissima_ seedlings are
superior to the other blight resistant species for purposes of nut
production.

The earliest introductions of blight resistant chestnuts from the Orient
are represented by very few trees in the Southeast, but a small number
of plantings of trees distributed in 1926 have been observed. These are
producing good nuts and the trees are quite healthy, regardless of
conditions of pl