groves about 17 per cent of the trees are affected. That is the report
coming from the parties inspecting now for the Blight Commission. I
shipped Mr. Mayo about four or five thousand trees this fall. I don't
suppose there were a dozen that were thrown out, thinking they were
blighted or diseased. We have records of all that up at my place. There
are some trees right here now that came from my nursery. I wish you
gentlemen could just see for yourselves; come out and see.
The Chairman: In advancing this chestnut on a commercial basis it had
better be stated that it does not blight as badly as the American
chestnut and that when blighted it can be cared for with less cost than
the apple tree. I would suggest that some such notice be sent out with
commercial stock. That would put it on the right basis so that the
chestnut would find its position, which it is not finding now because
the people are full of the blight; and if a frank, full statement of
this sort were made I believe it would be extremely important.
Mr. Rockey: I went through practically the whole extent of Mr. Sober's
orchard recently and found one infected tree. I can vouch for the
statement that he has made that he is almost surrounded by blight.
The Chairman: I have given attention to only a few of my own trees that
were blighted because I have too much else to do and too large a place,
a couple of hundred acres engaged in a small and large way,--a variety
of ways--with nut trees; and the few I have cared to save after blight
has begun I have saved by cutting it out very thoroughly and using
either white paint or grafting wax. I used also pine tar and some gas
tar. I killed some good trees that I wanted particularly to save by
putting on gas tar.
The matter of compelling the removal of infected trees is a very
important one, but it must rest with the authorities. In the vicinity of
New York we have so much hard wood that you cannot sell it unless you
are in some sort of a trade combination. Fine oak, fine hickory, fine
chestnut, you can't dispose of in New York City, because we have such a
lot of it. We have wild deer within fifteen miles of New York City on
three sides of us on account of the forests. You have got to find some
special way for disposing of this blighted chestnut timber. Telephone
and telegraph poles and ties all go for nothing, unless you happen to be
so situated that you can manage the matter commercially, and a way
should be found by the state so that people can dispose of their
blighted timber, which is just as good as any other.
It is very important to note that the boy scouts are interested, and we
ought to encourage their interest. It is a splendid thing, getting the
interest of boys engaged. You know how active a boy is in getting a
snake from under a rock and he will do the same thing with the chestnut
blight. It is his natural tendency to hustle when he gets after
anything. This chestnut blight belongs to the microbe group and the
microbe is the great enemy of mankind. In wars the microbe kills about
eight men for every one killed by missiles. If we can encourage the
interest of boy scouts in fighting the greatest of all human enemies,
the microbe, including this little fungus, we shall have a splendid
working force.
In regard to the injection of poisons and medicines into trees, it seems
to me that a very firm stand ought to be taken by all responsible men
who know anything about plant pathology. We know that a poison injected
into a tree must either act injuriously right there upon the cells of
the tree, or else must undergo metabolic changes. A tree cannot use
anything that is thrown into it, poison or food or anything else, until
it has undergone a metabolic change; you must have a distinct, definite
chemical process taking place and we ought to state that most of the
substances which are alleged to be of value, when injected into a tree,
are either absolutely worthless or injurious. One man tried to persuade
me that his medication if applied to the cambium layer would be
absorbed, and said that if I would only use it on a few of my trees I
could see for myself. He said it would drive off even the aphides. I
tried it on four trees affected with aphides and found that he told me
the truth. It drove them off, because the trees died and the aphides
left. One tree lived a year before being killed; it was a most insidious
sort of death, but the aphides left that tree. (Laughter.)
Some of the Asiatic chestnuts resist the blight very well. Curiously
enough when grafted upon some of the American chestnuts they then become
vulnerable. Two years ago, from a lot of about one thousand Corean
chestnuts in which there had been up to that time no blight, I grafted
scions on American stump sprouts and about 50 per cent of those grafts
blighted in the next year, showing that the American chestnut sap offers
a pabulum attractive to the Diaporthe, and that is a fact of collateral
value in getting our negative testimony upon the point.
Concerning the question of carrying blight fifty miles, there's no
telling how far birds will fly carrying the spores of Diaporthe upon
their feet. The spores are viscid and adhere to the feet of beetles, or
migratory birds which sometimes make long lateral flights following
food, rather than direct flights north and south. It is quite easy to
imagine birds carrying this Diaporthe over an interval of possibly fifty
miles, making that distance in one night perhaps. Someone may have
carried chestnuts in his pocket to give to his granddaughter fifty miles
away, and in that way carried the blight. If any grafted trees have been
carried fifty miles, or any railroad ties, with a little bark on,
carried fifty miles and then thrown off, it might blight the chestnuts
in that vicinity. One can have as much range of imagination as he
pleases as Longfellow says, There is no limit to the imagination in
connection with questions of spreading the blight of Diaporthe.
Some of the Japanese and Corean chestnuts and some of the Chinese
chestnuts resist blight fairly well. Among my chinkapins, I have the
common _pumila_ and the Missouri variety of _pumila_, which grows in
tree form forty or fifty feet high. I have the alder-leaf chestnut,
which keeps green leaves till Christmas, sometimes till March when the
snow buries them, and those comparatively young trees have shown no
blight; but one hybrid, between the chinkapin and the American chestnut,
about twelve years of age, has blighted several times. I have cut off
the branches and kept it going, but this year I shall cut it down. It
will start at the root and sprout up again. I thought I'd give up that
hybrid, but having heard Col. Sober's report I will begin at the root
and look after some of the sprouts. That hybrid is the only one of my
chinkapin group that has blighted at all.
In regard to the use of bichloride of mercury or formaldehyde, it seems
to me that formaldehyde will be a better germicide than bichloride of
mercury, because bichloride of mercury coagulates the albuminous part of
the plasm and may destroy the cell structure, whereas the formaldehyde
will be more penetrating and less injurious. One would need to know how
strong a formaldehyde solution can be used safely. I presume the most
vulnerable part of the tree would be at the bud axils. Spraying must
require considerable experience at the present time and is of doubtful
efficiency for timber chestnuts I am sure. We would like very much to
hear any further comment upon this subject.
Prof. Smith: Mr. Sober's orchard is so unusually large that evidently it
does not apply to average cases. The average man is buying chestnut
trees for the garden or yard or lane. Prof. Collins has an acre on the
top of a hill at Atlantic Forge and there he has fought diligently with
the skill of a highly trained man, and the blight is gradually driving
him back. I think that in a short time the trees on Prof. Collins' acre
will be gone. I believe we need much more information before we can
offer any hope that chestnut trees from a nursery will be safe against
blight. I should like to ask the Blight Commission if they are at the
present time planning to breed immune strains of chestnuts, and if not,
I wish to suggest that it is a piece of work well worthy of their
consideration. They might try grafting on American stocks, or on their
own seedlings, some of the Korean chestnuts, on any variety that
promises resistance, and also hybridizing, with the hope of getting a
good nut that will resist the blight.
The Chairman: That is a very important matter, no doubt. In regard to
the few chestnuts bought for lanes and gardens, I know a good many men
who have bought a few grafted chestnuts with the idea of setting out a
number of acres if those few did well, being men of a conservative sort.
Men of that sort are the ones we want to have in our Association. We
want to have men who will buy four trees, and if they do well, set out
four hundred acres. That is what a great many men have had in mind in
buying two, four or six trees of any one kind; they want to try them
out. That is the wise way, the conservative way, the truly progressive
way. If we are going to have very large numbers of any one kind of
chestnut set out, we must make a statement of the dangers, so that men
may be forewarned. If they set them out without warning and are
disappointed, they drop the entire subject and go to raising corn and
hogs; and then, to save trouble, turn these hogs into the corn and get
to doing things in the easiest way, rather than carry on the complicated
methods of agriculture that belong to the spirit of the present time. I
would like to know if many efforts are being made toward breeding immune
kinds. I am at work on that myself.
Mr. Pierce: Our Commission has recently gotten, I think, about fifty
pounds of Chinese chestnuts of several kinds, which they expect to plant
for experiment. Besides that they have made some other arrangements of
which I know very little. This investigation will take years. The
Commission has been compelled to devote itself to so many lines of work
that I am afraid this question has not been given the attention it might
have had. I think in the future there will be a good deal done along
that line.
Two of us have been given the title of tree surgeons, and we work, or
make arrangements to have someone else work, sometimes the scout, in the
orchards throughout the state. I have a list of two hundred owners of
cultivated chestnut trees that I got in the last month from various
sources. Anyone in Pennsylvania who has a cultivated chestnut tree, can
send a postal card, get one of us out to examine the tree and see
whether it is blighted, and we will demonstrate what can be done in the
way of treating it. I have done that right along in the last two months.
If it is only a single tree I cut out all I can myself.
The Chairman: There are two distinct questions; first, the chestnut as a
food tree, and second, as a timber tree. Your work has been chiefly with
the chestnut as a timber tree?
Mr. Pierce: No, mine has been mostly on the lawn, so that it is for
nuts.
Experiments made on one or two species of Japanese chestnuts show about
9 per cent of tannin; the tannin in the American chestnut runs only 6
per cent and in the small American, runs less. We know that the Japanese
is somewhat more immune than the American. We have already found that it
has 50 per cent more tannin. I believe one of us wrote you about
experiments to find out the percentage of tannin in Corean, North
Japanese, South Japanese and Chinese chestnuts. The investigation will
be carried on for the next two or three months.
Mr. Corsan: May I ask if there is any soil food that would increase the
amount of tannin? Trees protect themselves. We have watched the black
walnut and seen him fight all sorts of enemies. The tree has poisons
everywhere and the nut a thick shell to boot and doesn't coax enemies to
get at him or to eat him until he is ripe.
A Member: Have you found that fertilizing a tree increased the
percentage of tannin?
Mr. Rockey: That hasn't been determined yet but it will be studied.
The Chairman: It is a question if the tendency would not be for tannin
to go over to sugar and cellulose under cultivation. I don't remember
the chemistry on that. Aren't there any expert chemists here who can
tell us? The natural tendency of the tree under high cultivation would
be to change tannin over into sugar and starch.
Mr. Corsan: This talk of the chestnut blight reminds me of a remark made
by a gentleman at a peach growing convention. He said the best thing
that ever happened to this country was to get that San Jose scale
because it stopped lazy men from growing peaches. He said, "I don't mind
it a bit and can make more money than when peaches were nothing a
basket." Probably nature will help us some way.
The Chairman: We have to consider what nature wants to do.
Mr. Mayo: If I am in order, I would like to know whether this fungus
trouble is likely in the future to attack or has at any time attacked,
the apple, pear or quince?
The Chairman: I think it has been pretty well decided that they are not
in danger. I will, however, ask Mr. Rockey and Mr. Pierce to answer that
question.
Mr. Rockey: Up to the present time there has been no indication that the
blight will get into them. This might be a good occasion for me to
mention the Connellsville fungus again. It was found on some of the oaks
and other trees in this section of the country, and for a time it
looked as though the blight was getting into other species, but since
that fungus has been identified there has been no indication that the
blight will extend beyond the chestnut group as a parasite, although you
can inoculate oaks and other trees with the fungus and it will live in
them, but only on the dead portion of the tree and not as the parasite
lives on the chestnut.
Prof. Smith: I should like to ask Mr. Sober if he has found any evidence
that the paragon chestnut differs from the native chestnut in resistance
to the blight, and if his paragons are different from other paragons?
Col. Sober: I cannot say whether my chestnuts are different from the
other paragon chestnuts or not, or whether they are as resistant to the
blight. I know it is a very sweet chestnut. In regard to keeping my
groves clean--from 1901 to 1910, we had three broods of locusts and two
hailstorms that opened the bark in almost every tree and branch. The
limbs were stung by the locusts thousands of times, so that I didn't
have a crop of chestnuts. Professor Davis was cutting off limbs for a
couple of months so you see my trees were open, if any ever were, to
receive the blight. The hailstorms destroyed the leaves and I didn't
have any chestnuts that year in one part of my grove and with all
that--you people come and see how clean it is, that's all there is to
it. I know what I've done and what I can do.
The Chairman: The next paper in order is that of Professor Smith.
NUT GROWING AND TREE BREEDING AND THEIR RELATION TO CONSERVATION
PROFESSOR J. RUSSELL SMITH, PENNSYLVANIA
Prof. Smith: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen; I am going to ask your
indulgence for including in my subject a matter that perhaps goes a
little beyond the scope of this organization, for I wish to speak of
fruit as well as nut-bearing trees. Conservation, whose object is the
preservation of our resources for future generations, as well as for
ourselves, finds its greatest problem in the preservation of the soil.
The forests can come again if the soil be left. It is probable that we
can find substitutes for coal, and for nearly everything else, but once
the soil is gone, all is gone; and the greatest danger to the soil is
not robbery by ill cropping, because no matter how man may abuse the
soil, scientific agriculture can bring it back with astonishing speed.
But the greatest enemy of conservation is erosion, the best checks for
erosion are roots.
Thus far, the only man who has been telling us anything about planting
roots upon the hillsides is the forester. But he usually sets nothing
but wood trees, which at the end of fifty or a hundred or a hundred and
fifty years, we can cut down, and which, during the intervening time,
have done nothing but cast shade, drop leaves and retain the soil. My
doctrine is that the potentially greatest crop-producing plants are not
those on which we now depend for our food, but are the trees,; that the
greatest engines for production are not the grasses, but the trees. Our
agriculture is an inheritance from the savage, and the savage found that
he could do better with annual grains than he could with nut trees,
because he didn't know how to improve the nut crop by selection of the
trees, while there came involuntarily an improvement in the other crops.
No man today knows the parentage of some of the cultivated plants and
grains on which we now depend. Thus we came down to the present day of
science, with the purely chance discoveries of savages as the main
dependence of mankind for the basis of agriculture.
We have within a decade discovered the laws of plant breeding. We know a
good deal more about it now than ever before and are in a position to
start about it very deliberately and with a reasonable certainty that we
are going to get certain combinations of qualities if we keep at it long
enough. Thus the hickory and walnut offer perfect marvels of
possibilities. Look around on these tables and see the size of some of
these things. There are hickory nuts 1-1/4 inch long and there are
shagbarks as full of meat as pecans and probably quite as good. There
are in Kentucky, I am told, hickory nuts that you can take in your
fingers and crush. Here we have the pecan, this great big shellbark from
Indiana, the shagbark from the North, and the thin shell nuts from
Kentucky. Now hybridize these and I think, if you work at it long
enough, you will get a tree that will have all those good qualities.
The wonderful black walnut is a tree of hardiness, and the delicious
Persian or English walnut is a nut of acceptable form. The pair offers
splendid possibilities in their hybrid progeny.
We have fruits thus far recognized as of little value which offer great
possibilities as forage producers. The mulberry bears from June to
September and the persimmon from September till March and the pig
harvests them himself.
We have the possibility of a brand-new agriculture, depending not upon
grains, but upon tree crops, provided someone will breed the
crop-yielding trees which we can use. This will permit us to use
entirely different kinds of land from that now considered best for
agriculture. The natural necessities for plant growth, I believe, are
heat, moisture, sunlight and fertility. Now they are not all the
limiting factors with man, because man adds the fifth, the arbitrary
fact of arability, and that right away bars out about half of the
fertile earth, because when we insist on heat, light, moisture,
fertility _and arability_, we leave out that rough half of the earth
equally fertile, idle, subject only to the work of the forester, who
will give us a forest about 1999. It might just as well be planted with
a host of crop-yielding trees, the walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans,
persimmons, mulberries--and the list is very long. There are at the
present time in use in Mediterranean countries twenty-five crop-yielding
trees other than the ordinary orchard fruits. I am told that they have
oak trees there which yield an acorn that is better than the chestnut. A
pig will fill himself with acorns on the one hillside and with figs on
the next hillside and then lie down and get fat. We are too industrious,
we wait on the pig; I want the pig to wait on himself.
But who is going to breed these things? These crop yielding trees? A
gentleman told us this morning that he was not nervous, that he could
watch a hickory tree grow, and stated that he had forty acres of land
and was breeding trees for fun. Here is Dr. Morris, who is having a
delicious time doing the same thing. We should not have to depend on
enthusiasts who are working for fun; we must not depend on such sources
for the greatest gifts in the line of food production that man can
imagine. This work should be done by every state in the Union. I believe
that it is capable of proof that we can get just as much yield from a
hillside in untilled fruit and nut-yielding trees, as we can from
putting that same hillside under the plough and getting wheat, corn,
barley, rye and oats and a little grass once in a while. It will make
just as much pig or just as many calories of man food from the tree
crops as it will make under the plough. And under the plough that
hillside is going down the stream to choke it and reduce the hillside to
nothing.
We have three classes of land. The first class is the level land, which
belongs to the plough now and for all time. The third class, which is
the unploughable steep mountain and hill land, is probably as great in
area as the level land, and between the two is the hilly land that we
are now cultivating to its great detriment, visibly reducing the earth's
resources by bringing about rapidly that condition which has led to the
saying in the Old World: "After man, the desert." The Roman Empire,
where men have had possession for two thousand years, proves, "After
man, the desert." It is equally proven in much of China, but it can be
prevented if these hill lands are put to trees. But we cannot afford to
put those lands into trees unless the trees yield.
I move that this Association memorialize those persons who are in
position to promote the breeding of fruit and nut-yielding trees, that
we may bring nearer the day of tree-crop agriculture. I want a letter to
go from this Association with the authority of the Association and its
sanction, to the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington and to all the
men in authority in the Bureau of Plant Industry at Washington, to the
Presidents of the State Agricultural Colleges, the Directors of
Experiment Stations and professors who are interested in plant breeding.
That will make a list of three or four hundred persons and involve an
expenditure of a few dollars but I believe it will be productive of
good. I hope that the Association will see fit to lend its name and a
little cash to that proposition, because if we can get the authority of
the state and the money of the state, the results will come much more
rapidly than if there are just a few of us doing it independently.
(Applause.)
* * * * *
The Chairman: Will someone put Prof. Smith's suggestion in the form of a
motion?
A Member: I move that it be referred to the Committee on Resolutions.
(Motion carried.)
Mr. Corsan: Undoubtedly we all agree with Prof. Smith. He spoke of the
persimmon. When I speak of the persimmon in my country nobody knows what
I am talking about. I found two trees in Battle Creek, Michigan, in a
front yard. The person who owned them was an old lady. I said, "Will you
give me these persimmons?" She said, "Yes, take them all; the neighbors
come here and while they are getting the persimmons they bother me a
lot. Everybody seems to like them." They were delicious persimmons that
were quite edible before frost, they are probably the two furthest north
persimmon trees in the world. I went a little way around Devil Lake, and
found pawpaws. They are a very good fruit when cultivated. The idea of
preserving the soil and not sending it all into the Lakes and down into
the Gulf of Mexico--that is a good idea of Prof. Smith's.
Mr. Gardner: I submit that that Battle Creek woman should start a new
breakfast food. (Laughter.)
Mr. Corsan: Every second year there is an immense crop on one of the
persimmon trees; they are a male and female, I think. You can't see the
branches for the fruit, and the thermometer there falls to 22 degrees
below zero.
The Chairman: You can graft the male trees with pistillate grafts if you
want to, or you can transfer grafts both ways. The persimmon and pawpaw
will undoubtedly both grow at Toronto. They are not indigenous there
because of natural checks to development in their sprouting stage, but
if you buy Indiana stock for Toronto, such transplanted trees will both
grow there, I am sure. This is not quite relevant to Prof. Smith's
paper. It seems to me that Prof. Smith gave us a very comprehensive
resume of facts bearing upon the situation, perhaps not particularly
calling for discussion. We are very glad to have his arraignment of
facts.
The next paper on the program will be that of Dr. Deming. While Dr.
Deming is getting ready, I would like to have the trees shown. Mr. Jones
will speak about his pecans, these specimens of young trees here.
Mr. Jones: These are pecans that Mr. Roper brought up from the
Arrowfield Nurseries. (Here Mr. Jones described the trees.)