this country, I find, do not bear for the reason that they flower so
early that the staminate flowers are caught by frost--not the
pistillate. The pistillates will hold out against frost for a long time
and make good. There are two or three ways for overcoming this
difficulty. We may select for cultivation those kinds which bloom a week
or two, or even three weeks later than others, as in the case of the
Bony Bush variety.
There is hardly any more valuable tree in Central Europe than the purple
leafed hazel. I never have seen one bearing in this country. Its
staminate flowers come out too early in Connecticut. I have now some in
which I have grafted the Bony Bush, which flowers so much later that I
hope to have my purple hazels bearing nuts at Merribrooke.
On the whole, most of the points have been simply confirmatory of points
previously considered. We need not fear hazel blight because it is very
easily controlled, and many of the European hazels will furnish an
immensely valuable crop for almost all parts of temperate America. We
may develop, by breeding and by cultivation, types which will be hardy,
which will give us large, valuable, marketable crops, and which will be
desirable from the market man's point of view.
DR. STABLER: Can you get stocks that are free from blight?
DR. MORRIS: Last year I showed specimens of blight. The blight,
fortunately, begins upon a fairly large stem--upon a part of the stem
that is in plain sight. It takes from two to four years for a patch of
that blight to encircle a limb. If one will go over his hazel orchard
once a year and, where a bit of blight appears, cut it out with his
jack-knife and later paint the spot with a little white paint, one can
very readily control hazel blight. It is so easily done that we need not
fear it at all.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Ulman, I believe, is a hazel enthusiast.
DR. ULMAN: I have attempted to gather as much information as I could by
seeking out the failures with hazel because I had found no one reporting
success. In answer to a large number of letters which I sent out I
received some 290 replies which reported failures with the European
hazel. Dr. Morris tells us that blight can be readily controlled. So
far, that does not seem to be the experience of others, but it is only
fair to say that they do not know how to get rid of it in the way that
Dr. Morris has told us.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Ulman, I should like to ask if it is not true that
the hazels growing at Rochester could be added to your collection of 290
and change this complexion a little bit. Certainly last year we saw
hazel trees almost the diameter of this room which appeared to be
perfectly healthy.
THE SECRETARY: Can we recommend the hazel to be planted commercially?
THE PRESIDENT: If the hazel propagates by underground stolons
automatically, why can we not take the stolons and plant them in the
places that the trees have abandoned, letting them run on elsewhere?
DR. MORRIS: In regard to Dr. Deming's question, green European hazel
nuts are now selling in New York, out of cold storage, at seventy-five
cents a pound. Green hazel nuts like green almonds are prized by the
gourmet. All of the European hazels will eventually furnish a good
commercial proposition provided that the market is large enough, and the
market will probably grow, is growing in fact. Ripe filberts bring,
approximately, from ten to fifteen cents a pound. The trees bear well,
and I don't know of any reason why the hazel proposition should not be a
first rate one right now. The thing to do is to select kinds which we
know are valuable here. One may go through the seedling orchards at
Rochester and select one parent which bears large nuts prolifically, and
then propagate any number of European hazels from that one stock. My
Bony Bush is probably a desirable hazel.
In regard to the question of breeding from stolons, if we can keep that
thing going it would be all right, but it requires so much work I doubt
if we shall do anything in that way with the American hazel. The
European hazels don't travel by stolons. That is the advantage. So I
have given up the common American hazel as a commercial proposition. A
number of European and Asiatic hazels will be commercially profitable,
unquestionably, just as soon as we care to develop them.
MR. WEBER: What do you know about the hazels of the Western coast?
DR. MORRIS: Very profitable in parts of Oregon and Washington. They have
a large, good crop, which sells locally, but, like most Pacific Coast
fruits, the nuts lack flavor and quality. They have size and beauty, but
lack quality. The fruits and nuts grown on the Pacific Coast all lack a
certain fineness of character, for some reason yet unknown.
You have got to look after your European hazels, and not neglect the
orchard. I remember seeing some very beautiful apple trees in central
Maine not very long ago--no blight--no codling moth, and the trees free
from almost everything in the way of insects or fungous
troubles--beautiful, cultivated trees, and beautiful apples on them. I
asked another man, one of my acquaintances there, an old farmer, why he
didn't set out a lot of similar trees and make a good income. He said,
"Well, it won't go." He had a pasture about eight miles north of there,
and, said he, "I spent thirty dollars for apple trees to put into an
orchard, and I had great ideas about those apples. I set the trees out
in that orchard about three or four years ago, and last year when I went
up to look at them, there were hardly any apple trees left." He hadn't
looked at them for three or four years. (Laughter.) You can't raise
hazels that way.
THE SECRETARY: The reason I asked about the commercial value of the
hazel is that my own experience has been very unsatisfactory. I got some
hazels from Gillet, on the Pacific Coast six or seven years ago, set
them out around my place, and they have grown beautifully. I haven't
been able to detect any blight on them anywhere. Some of them are
fifteen feet high, have grown luxuriantly, and blossom every year, but I
haven't seen one nut yet. On the other hand, the other day I visited a
man near my home, who told me that he had raised some trees from nuts
which he had bought from an Italian grocery on the corner. He gets the
nuts when the crop first comes in, and stratifies in wet sand all
winter, and he says they all grow. He had some beautiful hazel trees.
One I estimated to be twenty feet high. I never saw a hazel tree which
approached it. He said it was only five or six years old. Last year he
had a fine crop of nuts from it. This year, however, he said that during
a warm spell in the winter the staminate bloom came out and was killed,
and there were no nuts on the trees. Now it seems to me that there is
great uncertainty about the hazels, and I don't know exactly what to
advise people to do. People ask me for advice as to what nuts to plant
commercially. I don't know whether to advise them to plant hazels or
not, and I don't know what varieties to advise people to plant. I don't
know how to advise them to overcome this difficulty of the early
staminate bloom and the winter killing. I can't now conscientiously
recommend people to plant hazel nuts commercially.
DR. MORRIS: Go to Rochester and get some there that bloom every year and
that bloom later. My Bony Bush blossoms some three weeks later than the
others, I presume. It is a bush that bears well every other year,
apparently.
THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions about this large family
of nut trees of which we have but a small corner of knowledge? If not,
we may look to an adjournment.
First, I wish to announce that this afternoon we are going to devote to
an excursion around the city, to see some of the most remarkable Persian
walnut trees which I think may be found anywhere.
I am asked by Prof. Close to say that the Department of Agriculture has
an exhibit of nuts on the fourth floor at 220 Fourteenth Street,
Southwest.
Meeting adjourned.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2 P. M.
Meeting called to order by the President.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Metcalf, Chief of the Bureau of Forest Pathology, of
the Department of Agriculture, has been in charge of the investigations
concerning the chestnut blight for a number of years.
DR. HAVEN METCALF: Mr. Chairman and Members of the Society: I will
present, first, a few general facts regarding the present status of the
chestnut bark disease, and, for the greater part of the information you
desire, I will rely on you to ask me questions.
The chestnut bark disease is getting to be an old story, but that plant
hyphenate, that objectionable imported disease, is more of a live issue
today than it ever has been before. All my attention during recent
months has been taken up with another imported plant disease, the white
pine blister rust, of which you have heard, and which does not concern
the special subject matter in which this Association is interested,
unless, perhaps, you may be interested in the pinon nut as the pinon
pine may ultimately be subject to attack by blister rust. However, this
disease, like the chestnut blight, is an example of what a relatively
harmless, or at least, not serious disease in a foreign country can do
when it is permitted to get into the United States.
This brings us to the question of the origin of the chestnut bark
disease, which, although the story has been told many times before, has
been the subject of so much dispute that I probably had better
recapitulate that matter. It has been proved beyond question that the
chestnut bark disease is a native of eastern Asia, China, Japan and
Korea; that it was introduced into this country in the '90's, upon
diseased chestnut nursery stock. It was not critically observed until
1904, but the condition of trees which were observed at that time shows
conclusively (provided the disease progressed in those early years as it
has since) that it was introduced into the country as early as the late
90's. The final demonstration of the fact that the disease is a foreign
disease and a native of Asia we owe to Mr. Frank Meyer, of the Office of
Seed and Plant Introduction, of the Department of Agriculture. Mr.
Meyer's observations are so interesting that I will pass around a few
pictures illustrative of his observations in China, the first picture
showing the country that is the home of the chestnut bark disease. The
second picture shows a chestnut orchard in China where the trees have,
with characteristic thrift, been planted around human burial mounds. The
remaining pictures show how the chestnut blight acts in China--very
differently from the way it acts in this country. In China, it produces,
as the pictures show, definite cankers, which do not girdle the tree,
which kill young trees occasionally, mutilate old trees, kill branches,
but the cankers do not girdle the trees. That disease has been known in
China we have no idea how many years, and, while it does a certain
amount of harm, is said by Mr. Meyer not to be really serious in China.
You can readily see, upon examining these pictures, that there is a
sharp contrast in the behavior of the disease as observed in China and
its behavior as observed in this country, where it will girdle a
comparatively large tree and the fungus spread all through the bark,
completely covering it, and doing that in a very short time. Of course,
then, the chestnut blight is one of those cases of which we have so
many, where a disease, passing to a new country, finds new surroundings,
hosts more favorable to its development, and progresses rapidly.
The natural range of the chestnut bark disease at the present time--that
is, I mean, its range on the native chestnut and the range through which
it is now spreading by non-human agencies, is, on the north, practically
co-extensive with the range of the native chestnut. The disease is found
in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, as far south as Virginia, and as far
west as western Pennsylvania and eastern West Virginia. Throughout this
area it is spreading by what I may call natural means, and the disease
has been shown to be unusually well provided with means of
dissemination. I will speak a little later about the spread of the
disease outside of this area--that is, west and south, since in the West
and in the South it is being spread, as far as we know, exclusively by
human agencies.
The question is often asked me, "What is the future of the
chestnut--that is, the native chestnut--in this country? What is the
course of the disease going to be?" The only way in which we can answer
that is to look in the parts of the country where the disease has been
present longest--Long Island, for example; Westchester county, New York;
Bergen county, New Jersey; Fairfield county, Conn. Upon a recent
examination of those areas I found no chestnut trees surviving in a
healthy condition. We have, of course, from the beginning, hunted, and
hunted hard, to find individual chestnut trees that might be immune to
the disease--native American chestnuts. We expected to find such trees,
but up to date we have not found them. It is a very extraordinary fact
and an almost unparalleled fact, because with the majority of plants
affected, by any given disease, we can find some individuals that are
not only resistant, but immune.
Now, in these old areas, particularly on Long Island, in 1907, when the
disease first came under my observation, I marked certain trees in order
to observe how long the stumps of these trees or the dead trees would
continue to send up sprouts from the ground. It is an interesting fact
that some of those trees which were dead in 1907 are still putting up
sprouts. The sprouting capacity of the chestnut tree is indeed
marvelous, but I am sorry to say that I haven't been able to find any
healthy sprouts over three years old. I haven't been able to find any
living sprouts more than four years old. The disease seems to be
following up the sprouts as it followed up the original stem.
Right there, in the behavior of the disease toward the sprouts, we have
an interesting fact. During the first year of its life the chestnut tree
or the chestnut sprout is immune to this disease, or practically so. You
can rarely find a seedling or sprout of the first year that is attacked
by the disease, and even in the second or third years a comparatively
small per cent of them are attacked. It is thus possible to produce
chestnut nursery stock that for several years does not show the disease.
So far as I can see, the chestnut blight is not stopping naturally in
its course anywhere. I cannot get a particle of reliable evidence that
it is. In this part of the country and to the south of here, in
Virginia, for example, the parasite has more months in the year during
which it can grow, it appears to be utilizing that time in spreading
more rapidly, at least killing trees more quickly, than to the north of
this area. From the standpoint of the grower of nuts, the important
question is, of course, whether the disease can be controlled. I think
your Secretary, in a recent article, summed the situation up as clearly
and briefly as can be done. He said, in an article entitled "The
Progress of Nut Culture in the East:"
"Of the chestnut we have excellent varieties such as the Rochester,
Boone and Paragon, but all development in the culture of this nut is
being held up by the blight. Everybody is awaiting the results of the
government work in breeding immune hybrids. There may be great
opportunities, nevertheless, in chestnut growing outside its native
area, where the blight can be controlled."
There is no doubt that in an orchard tree, in chestnut orchards, the
disease can be controlled within reason by the cutting out method that
has long been advocated, but the point is that the margin of profit on
the chestnut is not sufficient to make that method pay, and whenever
members of this Association or others interested in the propagation of
chestnuts have written to me for advice I have simply advised them not
to plant chestnuts at present. I cannot see at the present time, that
any attempt at control is profitable. That is a very different thing
from saying that it can not be done, or that it may not later become
profitable.
A few words regarding the method of spread of the disease. In 1908, when
the office of which I have charge was first organized, Professor
Collins, who has addressed this Association a number of times regarding
this disease, visited a number of orchards and nurseries in the Eastern
States, going as far as southern Virginia to the south, and west as far
as York county, Pennsylvania, Although that was comparatively early in
the progress of the disease, wherever he went, without exception, where
there was a nursery, he found the disease present and spreading onto the
native trees. There were, however, several established orchards which he
visited where that was not the case, where the disease was not present.
It has been brought out repeatedly that, while the chestnut blight is
marvelously adapted to spread by natural means--wind, birds, insects,
rain, all the ways in which a plant disease ordinarily spreads--the way
in which it spreads over great areas and through great distances is on
chestnut nursery stock.
In that connection, then, I may briefly discuss the present range of the
disease so far as we know it, outside of the natural range of the
chestnut tree. South of Virginia, so far as we know, the disease is
present at only one point (Greensboro, N. C.), where it was introduced
in a nursery and spread to native trees. In stating this area of
distribution, I ought to say that for about a year and a half we have
made no special effort to determine the range of this disease. I mean we
have not gone out of our way to do it. We have simply collected such
evidence as has come to hand casually, and so it may be that there are
now other points of infection in North Carolina, or south of there, but,
if so, we do not know of them. In Ohio, the disease is present at three
points, of which one is a large and serious infection at Painesville. In
Iowa, it is present at one point, Shenandoah, in a nursery. In Indiana,
it is present at five points; in Nebraska, at two points. In Michigan,
one point has been reported. In all of these cases it is in nurseries,
or on very recently planted trees. There is, or was, an interesting
point of infection in British Columbia. Probably the trees there are all
dead by this time, but that point is very interesting as being probably
an independent importation from the Orient.
There needs to be little said as to how the disease is spreading in this
area. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to read some letters that have
come to my attention:
"MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE,
"EAST LANSING,
"Aug. 18, 1916.
"Dr. Haven Metcalf,
"U. S. Dept. of Agriculture,
"Washington, D. C.
"Dear Mr. Metcalf:
"Last December, the Forestry Department of this College ordered of Glen
Bros., Glenwood Nurseries, Rochester, New York, five 6-foot trees of the
Sober Paragon chestnut. These were shipped to them April 4th and were
almost immediately planted in the Forestry Nursery here. About six or
eight weeks ago, the Forestry Department noticed that these trees were
dying and called our attention to this matter about four weeks ago. I
examined the trees in company with Mr. J. H. Muncie, one of our
assistants, and found all the external appearances of Chestnut Blight
with, however, only a very few imperfectly developed pycnidia. We
brought pieces of the bark of these trees into the laboratory and made
cultures and obtained the typical mycelium of chestnut blight. The
trees have been removed and we now have them in our laboratory.
"I am calling this to your attention as the trees were doubtless
infected when shipped. I feel that you ought to know that this firm is
sending out diseased trees.
"Very truly yours,
"(Signed,) ERNEST A. BESSEY,
"Professor of Botany."
The following is an extract from a letter from Frank N. Wallace, State
Entomologist of Indiana, dated July 13, 1916:
"My Dear Sir:
"Under separate cover I am sending you some samples of chestnut blight
which I secured from some trees shipped by Mr. C. K. Sober, Lewisburg,
Pa. Mr. Sober doubts that we have even seen a case of chestnut blight
and wanted some samples and I sent him the other half of the samples
which I am sending you.
"I have been trying to check up on some of Mr. Sober's trees and so far
I have found nearly fifty per cent of them have died from chestnut
blight disease."
The samples sent with this letter showed typical chestnut blight.
Some months ago Dr. W. H. Long, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, became
interested in the possibility of growing chestnuts in that country and
communicated with Glen Brothers, of Rochester, N. Y., to secure certain
information regarding them. He secured the information he wanted and
also some that was slightly gratuitous. I will read extracts from the
two letters:
"In regard to the blight, which you call the Eastern Chestnut Canker,
would say that this tree is practically immune from this disease, and
you would stand no more chance of having your chestnut trees infected
with the blight should you plant them, than you would if you planted
apple trees, of having them infected with the San Jose Scale or peach
trees, of the Peach Blight.
"There are over half a million trees at the famous Sober orchard in
Paxinos, Pa., none of which have the blight, and yet the blight rages
all around them in the American Sweet Chestnut groves that are all
through the mountain. Further evidence of its immunity from this disease
we cannot guarantee. We think this speaks for itself.
"We believe that if you would investigate this variety that you would
plant an orchard of Sober Paragon Chestnut trees, even if not a very
large one. We should like very much, indeed, to serve you and shall give
our personal attention to the selection and shipment of such trees as
you may require.
"Very truly yours,
"GLEN BROS., INC.
GM-AB "(s) JOHN G. MAYO."
* * * * *
THE PRESIDENT: Would you mind giving us the date of that last letter?
DR. METCALF: That is October 20, 1915.
The other letter signed by Mr. Mayo is as follows, and is dated Oct. 29,
1915:
"Replying to your October 25th letter we do not think that you or your
friend need have the least anxiety on account of the chestnut blight
reaching your section. This disease seems to be confined to a very small
area in northeastern New Jersey, southeastern New York, and southwestern
Connecticut. The disease has been in existence in this country since
1842, it has made very little progress, and the highest authorities now
state that it seems to be on the wane." (Laughter.)
* * * * *
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Do the experiments of the Department show any
possibility of control of the disease?
DR. METCALF: I don't think that there are any methods of control which
can profitably be applied to orchard trees under present commercial
conditions. If a man has a few orchard trees which he regards as
novelties and to which he is prepared to give very careful attention, I
think the disease can be controlled. So far as I can see, the only hope
of commercial control lies in none of the present varieties, but in Dr.
Van Fleet's hybrids, possibly in the Chinese chestnut, and, aside from
the objectionable qualities of the Japanese nut in certain strains of
Japanese. With the rapid withdrawal of the wild chestnuts from the
market, however, the price of chestnuts may rise, and control methods in
orchards become practicable.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. McCoy has been in Pennsylvania and has come back
with the very optimistic idea that the chestnut blight was under
control up there. I took him out on my farm in Maryland and showed him
my trees, and that the only thing that could destroy the trees faster
than the blight is a forest fire.
DR. METCALF: Exactly.
THE PRESIDENT: I believe, Dr. Metcalf, you conducted a series of
spraying experiments recently, and I understand that others have done
the same thing. Mr. P. A. Dupont, I believe, on his fine estate near
Wilmington, tried to spray a few chestnut trees with Bordeaux mixture,
and I understand he gave it up as a physical failure, to say nothing of
the cost. Am I right about that?
DR. METCALF: That is my understanding, that he was dealing with large
trees and failed.
A MEMBER: Well, did you succeed with small ones?
DR. METCALF: In the line of spraying? That is a long story, and I
suggest that Mr. Hunt answer that.