chatina_, a species not hitherto recognized as an important pecan pest.
Spittle bugs from southeastern pecans have been referred to a different
species.--Ed.]

Preliminary Results from Training Chinese Chestnut Trees to Different
Heights of Head

J. W. MCKAY AND H. L. CRANE[2]

Introduction

Many growers of Chinese chestnut (_Castanea mollissima_) want to know
how soon their young trees may be expected to bear their first crops of
nuts. This is determined by several factors, but perhaps one of the most
important is the amount and kind of pruning the trees receive during the
first four or five years they are in the orchard. One reason for the
importance of type of pruning is the characteristic habit of the species
to form branches low on the trunk, so that low-headed and spreading tops
result if trees are left unpruned.

It has long been accepted by most horticulturists that any kind of
pruning of fruit trees tends to be a dwarfing process. Hence, pruned
trees would be smaller than similar unpruned trees. Pruning of young
fruit trees, though reducing the size of the top and the number of
growing points, tends to stimulate the growth of the remaining shoots.
This has a marked tendency to delay the formation of fruit buds. Hence,
unpruned trees come into bearing earlier than even lightly pruned trees.
Tufts (2)[3] reported that lightly pruned deciduous fruit trees, such as
apple, pear, apricot, and peach, came into bearing one to three years
earlier than similar trees that had been heavily pruned. Crane (1) found
that height of head in apple trees had little effect on yield for the
first nine years in the orchard, but at the time the experiment was
terminated the trees were still too young for him to expect much fruit
production. He found, however, that the low-headed trees made more shoot
growth and a larger gain in trunk diameter than the high-headed ones,
and thus the bearing area was larger. Because the tree form of the
horticultural varieties of Chinese chestnut is somewhat comparable to
that of apple varieties, it would be expected that the two might give
similar growth and yield responses to pruning or training procedures.
The experiment described in this paper was initiated for the purpose of
determining the response made by trees of Chinese chestnut varieties
pruned and trained to three heights of head.

Experimental Procedure

The three varieties used in the experiment are Meiling, Nanking, and