roots. We took roots the
size of your finger with a lot of feeding roots, and we grafted onto
those five times four. We took four per variety. We used five varieties
of chestnuts, and all five of those each had four pieces and we had ten
of those seedlings. We wanted to find out whether any of those ten
seedlings would give us a better set of these five varieties than any
other trees. In other words, we are trying to get a start on a clonal
rootstock. We used a splice graft. We simply took a piece of scion and
spliced it right on the end of the root. We had four of those in the
bundle, and we had five per seedling and we had ten of them. That made
20 in all. We planted in a cold frame, with cheesecloth covering to keep
the temperature from getting too high. Eventually, if this thing works,
we will establish a clonal line. We planted those ten original trees but
you will be surprised. We can go back to the original tree if we
succeed with clonal lines, so a chestnut variety we hope will be
grafted on a line of stock that came from that one original tree. Bear
in mind this is the method and it remains to be seen whether it is going
to work for chestnuts.

The results are discouraging. Only one or two seedlings gave us six or 8
successful grafts on all the five varieties but by that method of trying
all five of these varieties on all ten of the seedings we hope to get a
start. We will try them again, and we hope to get at least a start that
will work. It may be that we will have to start over again. We may want
to take ten other seedlings. That is, in brief, our work so far in that
direction.

We took it off the ground. We didn't have long enough side roots.

MEMBER: How about mound layering?

DR. McKAY: We tried cutting off at the ground level and mounding up
those sprouts and tried to root them, with no satisfactory results.
There was just a small amount of rooting.

MEMBER: Did you try layering?

DR. McKAY: One year we did, but with no success.

MR. McDANIEL: I have seen a few layered successfully but it's a little
slow.

MR. O'ROURKE: Shall we move to vegetative propagation and consider
cuttings first?

DR. McKAY: Just one thing I think ought to be mentioned at this time. We
know that even the use of clonal rootstocks does not entirely eliminate
variability. All the work that has been done with these Malling apple
stocks shows that, as far as apples are concerned. Now we have an idea
which, in a crop like