U. S. Pecan Field Station, Albany, Georgia+

In 1926, twenty-eight seedling trees of _Castanea mollissima_ were
planted in the Champion experimental block at Philema, near Albany,
Georgia. These trees grew well and began producing nuts in 1932. In
1935, an additional 16 trees were planted in the same block. The trees
in both plantings have shown good vegetative vigor and have been fairly
productive. All the variations common to any group of Chinese chestnut
seedling trees have been in evidence. One or two trees have lacked
vegetative vigor but have produced heavy crops of nuts for their size.
Type of bur opening has varied from free dropping of nuts to those burs
from which the nuts are removed with difficulty; nut size has varied
from about 35 to about 90 nuts per pound; the date of earliest and
latest ripening of the nuts varies by about three weeks; nut color has
ranged from light browns to dark mahogany and dark chocolate brown; and
keeping quality and eating quality have ranged from good to poor.
However, nut production, as shown by the data presented in Table I has
been good and nut quality has been acceptable, so that with increasing
knowledge of the storage requirements of the nuts the trees have paid a
good profit in recent years. One of the older trees has consistently
produced close to 150 pounds of nuts each year for the past few years.

Some of the trees in this planting have been topworked to selections
from other plantings, including the variety Carr which showed up very
poorly in comparison with most of the seedlings. Some of the trees have
been culled out because of poor yield or nut size; and some have died as
a result of poor drainage.

An additional planting at Philema in the Brown tract was made in 1938.
The trees were planted in a portion of a five-acre block at some
distance from the original plantings, with a spacing of 25 feet apart on
the square in soil of rather light and sandy texture with fair subsoil
drainage. The fertility was low but has been improved through the use of
winter leguminous green manure crops and commercial fertilizers. Some of
the trees planted consisted of trees grown from carefully selected
_Castanea mollissima_ nuts imported from south China and designated by
the initials MBA, MAY, MAZ, and MAX. Others carried the designating
letters of "FP." The nuts from which these trees were grown were
imported by the Division of Forest Pathology of the U. S. Department of
Agricult