American
Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundat
2012
Newsletter
Dear
Friends and Cooperating Growers:
GROWERS’ REPORTS:
In 2011, we received 137 reports totaling 2,843 ACCF
chestnuts surviving. So far this year we have received 10 reports of 230 ACCF
chestnuts growing, although drought and other difficulties may be expected to
diminish results from these early reports.
This past winter we cut many
large chestnuts in the four research plots in which we harvest most of our
seed. Most of these chestnuts were early intercrosses, their blight resistance
no longer judged to be the best in a given breeding line, or else they were
duplicates which were shading much younger chestnuts known or suspected to have
superior blight resistance. Cutting some chestnuts improved the quality and
temporarily decreased the quantity of seed to be expected in these plots. Thus,
smaller numbers occasionally represent progress.
The June 29 wind storm (derecho) took down two bearing trees and also two large
grafts. We had heavy losses in the Lesesne to Phytophthora and voles. Remaining under our care are
735 chestnuts grown from seed, about half of which are small seedlings, if not
brand new this growing season, and so, also highly vulnerable to loss.
HARVEST:
Our 2011 harvest was a bumper crop of the very best, from
which we sent 3,070 seednuts to 189 growers in 30
states, D.C., Quebec and Italy, and planted the rest ourselves. Jane and Jim Reilly, our most
outstanding cooperators to date, came from PA to help for two mornings at
harvest. Taking turns on the six-foot ladder wielding the 14-foot extension
pole pruner, they did the lion’s share of the hardest work and returned home with a few
bags of burs, which they processed themselves; they then planted over 500.
We cannot promise anything
near a similar number of seednuts to volunteers who
may be able to help this coming fall, because we never know how many chestnuts
we will harvest until the job is done and the chestnuts are out of the burs. We
could not even make a reliable estimate by counting the number of swollen burs
(if such a thing could be done), because swollen or not, many of them may
contain just one, two or no chestnuts at all, instead of the usual three.
Whenever there are frequent, heavy rains during the time when female flowers
are receptive, pollination tends to be poor.
Volunteers to help at harvest
should contact us via email at allaccf@gmail.com . We harvest from
nine a.m. till noon on weekdays in the second half of September, and sometimes
also in the first few days of October. Precise dates cannot be fixed until
September, when we can better predict on which days help may be needed.
Harvest volunteers may take
home (in their burs) a much more generous share of the chestnut harvest than
the usual allotment sent to growers. We limit growers to 10 each, because
getting chestnuts out of the bur is very hard on the hands. In years of
surplus, we send extras to growers who have reported reliably and indicated
that they could plant and care for more than 10.
GRAFTING:
I made 60 grafts, mostly in March; this was an even earlier
spring than last year. Thirteen new grafts survive in six research plots. In
five of these plots, my percentage of takes was well above if not at 20%, but
the plots out in Giles County ruined my record. There we had two late killing
freezes or frosts; I put paper bags over the tops of shelters in which
direct-seeded chestnuts were growing and saved most of them. In the case of the
grafts, which are already inside shelters covered by shade bags, I thought they
might be OK. The only graft of 18 to survive, was one
that was made on the unique sprout from its chestnut root; all the other grafts
had additional stems which were exposed, so these grafted stocks may have been
weakened by the cold shock to prevent success. Next spring, I plan to test this
idea by cutting away all extra stems on each chestnut grafted. This will risk
loss of some root systems, where a graft fails to grow, but these plots are in
a former chestnut forest, containing many more native stocks than it is
possible for me to graft.
Ambrosia beetle and blight at
the union, where I had neglected to keep it covered with soil, took out three more older grafts. This leaves me with 66 grafts, among
which 11 bear nuts.
CRAIGS CREEK WILDLIFE CLEARING VIRTUAL TOUR:
This year’s tour is quite different from the usual. We did not plant
the original plot, but took over maintenance when it was not reported by the
people who had done the planting. This plot illustrates many things, the first
being our reason for requiring the Cooperative Grower Agreement Form, to
emphasize the long-term nature of a chestnut planting project and the need to
retrieve information from each experimental planting. Unfortunately, most of
the early plantings of ACCF chestnuts, in fact, the first ten years of
distributions to cooperating growers, have been, for our information purposes,
lost.
The growers of our early
chestnut projects are not the only ones at fault: my seedling records for the
early 90’s
are incomplete, with only the name and state of each grower, plus the number of
seedlings and nursery code for the mother tree. At that time, whenever growers
did not report, I deleted them completely from the database; it did not occur
to me until much later that the name was the only clue I would have for the
identity of the chestnuts. (These days, non-reporting or deceased growers are
shifted into a separate inactive database of people who do not receive
newsletters.)
The USDA-FS gave permission
to a Radford church group to plant 20 American chestnut seedlings. Jesse, the
technician who made the original butterfly garden and helped the group get
started, may be able to give the year, but I am unwilling to send forestry folk
on a paper chase. It was in the first or second year when tree shelters came on
the market, when everyone was trying them out, so I guess the year was around
1993.
To enter the plot, you park
by a forestry gate and walk about a quarter-mile on a mossy trail in deep shade
up a very gentle slope where woodland wild flowers bloom throughout the spring,
culminating in a June rhododendron show. March through May, tall rubber boots
are necessary, unless your broad jump can span two feeder streams three or four
yards in breadth; they are mostly dry beds the rest of the year.
The clearing at the top of
the trail is about 200 yards, north to south, and 20 yards, east to west. The
poor chestnuts get only an hour or two of direct sun at midday. This is not
enough for American chestnut, which thrives in full and morning sun: without
sufficient sun, they cannot grow at the normal rapid rate, and they cannot
flower or bear nuts. Most important, shade breaks down blight resistance.
When the planting was made we
were not aware of that last fact, nor did anyone know that tree shelters are
unsuitable for raising American chestnut seedlings: the space inside the
shelters is too narrow for the large leaves; this causes seedlings to grow
deformed or spindly. Even worse, the damp enclosed space within the tubes makes
an ideal incubator for the blight fungus. The children and their parents put up
six-foot tree shelters here to protect their chestnuts.
After the project had gone
unreported for a few years, I checked up on it myself, because it is just a
half-mile from our house. Since it appeared abandoned, I adopted it, because I
didn’t
want the children to return years later and find no chestnuts. First I removed
all the shelters (cut them into 8” lengths to recycle for use protecting grafts or
direct-seeded chestnuts) and installed a deer fence, made of rebar posts and
10# test fishing line, hung with bright flagging to ward off the deer. This
fence needs mending nearly every time I check it; in such a woodland environment
where the deer run wild it is an impractical and imperfect deterrent. A little
at a time, we carried in wire protection cages.
The Forest Service had
planted autumn olive which is invasive, no longer recommended. A combination of
loppers and poison contain it, barely. Eight of the original chestnut
planting survive, although all but one are scrawny specimens even though
perhaps twenty years old. One, which now gets much more sun has grown over 24
feet tall; its first blight canker shows a swollen, blight-resistant reaction.
Over the years 2003 through 2010, I have planted by direct-seeding many
chestnuts with better expectations than the original ones planted; 20 of these
survive, but most are very small. This plot will not produce nuts until a storm,
insects or woodcutters take down more of the shading oaks to the east. We have
seen such things happen, so we continue to maintain this plot in hopes that one
day its chestnuts may be released.
AMBROSIA BEETLE and perhaps other pests, as well:
Wherever we had ambrosia beetle damage last year, we sprayed
all grafts, once a week or after each rain with permethrin,
beginning in March instead of April, because of the early spring weather. Rain
washes away the spray, and the weekly duty is quite a chore when you have so
many places to cover. Much later in the spring we learned about Bayer Advanced,
a rather expensive systemic treatment which is supposed to last for 12 months
and known to kill many pests, among them, gypsy moth and emerald ash borers, so
we switched to this for a trial against ambrosia beetle. It was somewhat
inclusive, only because we had already used permethrin
and started the treatment too late; however, we had no ambrosia beetle damage
in any of the grafts treated with Bayer Advanced, so we shall use this product
again, depending on the weather, in April or March, 2013, on all grafts and
hope to report a perfect result next year. This chemical is mixed in a gallon
of water, its strength calculated according to the diameter of the stem to be
treated. If it works, it would be a most convenient solution.
Where gall wasp was a big
problem last year, we had virtually none this year, although we spotted two
Chinese chestnuts in town which were heavily infested with this pest. We did
find a few deformed galls in the Martin American Chestnut Planting, and on one
branch of a big graft in our yard, pinched them off and destroyed them.
In the ongoing war against
voles, we ran out of Prozap at the same time as the
store’s
supplier, so we have been trying an organic product, Plantskydd , which is
advertised to deter rabbits and other small critters for up to a year. This
sounds too good to be true, but nevertheless we have been sprinkling it inside
cages or down the holes, as we discover new tunnels. Next year we may try it
exclusively in one plot, for a controlled experiment.
OUTSTANDING COOPERATORS:
Special thanks to Mark Miller and his crew from the USDAFS Blacksburg Ranger Station for cutting down quite a few very large
trees, mostly tulip poplars, which used to shade the first two or three rows of
chestnuts in the Hotine plot and probably were also
responsible for delaying nut production on some large mature chestnuts.
We thank the Mary Moody Northern Foundation and Virginia
Tech for plot maintenance on Salt
Pond Mountain.
Thanks again to John Buschmann for supporting ACCF research and plot
maintenance in the Lesesne.
Many thanks to Rick Gendreau, Carol Croy,
Kyle Boardman,Vicky & Eli Lewis, in addition to Jane & Jim
Reilly, for volunteer help at harvest last fall. Kyle and Eli also set up a
bat house, about 10 feet up a tree, which grows just above a small chestnut
plot near a watering pond, a likely place for bats to live and help control
insects.
At this time of year, many growers have to water new
seedlings or risk losing a sizable investment in chestnut work. This duty done,
on the way home, I listen to Pavarotti; the beautiful music he made lasts
forever. I have found it to be a perfect accompaniment to my chestnut thoughts
and plans, while driving to and from the chestnut plots: an inspiration going,
followed by a reward for the return trip. The best aria on this, my best CD,
ends with the words, “di dolore morore,” expressing what will happen
if you forget to water your seedlings through the drought. Our chestnuts cannot
last forever. May some of them last at least 200 years; may their progeny last
forever!
We look forward to reading
your reports and thank you for your work.
Respectfully submitted,
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Plant Pathology, Virginia Tech
Ed Greenwell, Vice President & Director of Tennessee chestnut projects,
Electrical Engineer, McEwen, TN
John Rush Elkins, Secretary,
Professor Emeritus Chemistry, Concord College, WV
Joyce G. Foster, Treasurer, Research Biochemist,
Beaver, WV.
Dave McCurdy, Director
& Nursery Superintendent Emeritus, Raleigh, NC
Dedicated to the restoration of
American chestnuts
American Chestnut
Cooperators’ Foundation
2011
Newsletter
Dear Friends and Cooperating Growers:
GROWERS’ REPORTS:
So far we have six growers
reporting 108 all-American chestnuts growing. Last fall and winter, I planted
282 chestnuts; in spite of very good germination only 173 remain for me to water
through the drought. We shall never again plant such a large number in one
year. We had a chance to open up three new forest plots, and we went for it.
Three or four dozen, on which the autopsy has not yet been done, died from
either drought or voles and many more to other above- and below-ground
varmints. Altogether, 777 of my chestnuts planted since 1985 survive.
GRAFTING:
Since many states have
recently enacted quarantine or other restrictive laws against imports of
chestnuts from those states in which gall wasp has been identified, we can no
longer send scions to cooperating grafters.
You can still continue improving your chestnut groves by collecting
scions from the best-looking among your chestnuts with swollen blight cankers
and grafting them on the new shoots from chestnuts killed by the blight. This
is what we have been doing all along. This spring I made 70 grafts of which 14
are growing. Following heavy losses to
ambrosia beetle this spring, altogether 53 of my grafts since 1990 survive.
HOTINE PLOT VIRTUAL TOUR:
We named it for my parents;
Hotine is my family name. Located in the National
Forest about 300 yards downhill from our back yard, the half acre was cleared
by a Forest Service crew in the winter of 2002-03, after Ed Leonard, USDAFS silviculturist, obtained special permission for the
research plot.
Site selection was deliberate: it is east facing (for morning sun exposure), on a cove-slope, two-thirds of the way down the mountain (to avoid frost pockets), where there used to be a field in which tulip poplars grew 100 feet tall in 30 years, promising great growth potential. Gary wanted the soil disturbed as little as possible, so the stumps were left in place and killed by applying a high nitrogen fertilizer. In the upper half of this clearing we laid out 10 rows, about eight feet apart because the slope is so steep, perhaps 50 degrees, and drove stakes to mark planting places, from six to 10 per row, the spacing dictated by the stumps. Laying branches across the slope, leveling places for the cages, removing roots and rocks to make the planting holes and making the protection cages completed the heavy work, well before planting time.
We accepted plenty of volunteer help from our children and
grandchildren and especially from Douglas Buege,
who carried most of the wire (enough rolls of 5 x 50 foot weldwire
to make 94 cages) down to the site that summer, when he was doing the research
for his book about American chestnuts, “If a Tree Falls”. He expressed concern
that the steep site could be prone to erosion, but this has not been a problem.
The grasses and clover we planted, along with volunteer wildflowers and
berries, rapidly covered the bare soil.
At the time when we made the application for a clearing, we
proposed planting the next generation of the Miles x Ruth family there.
However, that year Gary had discouraging results when rating the cankers among
what were then the best representatives in that line. This is one of the big
challenges in resistance breeding: from one year to the next, over the winter,
blight cankers may completely change their appearance, altering the resistance
rating from good to bad or sometimes, vise versa.
This is why Gary rates cankers annually and why we cull individuals whole
blight resistance does not hold up for at least 10 years. Thus Gary decided
that we should start a new family here, using the mother tree with highest
rated blight resistance and longest blight control.
We had observed, among all our chestnuts, this one was the last to
go into dormancy, and we considered this extra week or two in growth might
bestow an advantage in disease resistance. Thinking along these lines, we
decided to use as father tree, the first chestnut to emerge from dormancy,
which is a week to 10 days ahead of all the others, and this way, perhaps
produce some progeny that combined the first in and last out feature to further
extend the growing season. This was my idea, which may yet turn out to be
bogus, but since I was doing the pollination in 2003, I decided to try it.
So far, the Hotine plot has been mostly
a place for good luck. Starting with ready agreement from the community for the
cut and major help from the USDAFS, next thing we received the grant from the
National Wild Turkey Federation which paid for site preparation, protection
cages and maintenance for the first three years.
The only bad luck was with the first controlled pollination. If
you put up 50 bags, enclosing 150 flowers, return three times to paint pollen
on each flower at intervals over a 10 day period, you may harvest a number of
chestnuts anywhere between zero and 450. The pollen may be immature or too old,
and the flowers generally are not all receptive on the same day. My 2003 pollination was a flop: it produced
just seven viable chestnuts. I planted them in the top two rows, along with
some volunteer seedlings which I planned to use for grafting stocks.
The following year I planted 35 more of this intercross. In
2005, deciding it was a difficult cross to make and maybe we had enough of these, we began to plant nuts from the same mother
tree, using different father trees; next we used different mother trees with
the original mother as the father. Finally in 2007, we planted an extra
column of open-pollinated chestnuts in the Miles X Ruth line, once again back
in favor. This way we may be able to compare their blight resistance to the
newer breeding lines on this site.
Now we have 94 seedlings and four grafts growing. The grafts are
of parent trees and also, one new first generation selection. In general, the
first two or three seedlings in each row grow very slowly or not at all, while
the rest make very good to exceptional growth. The cause was a planting
mistake: we planted too close to several 100-foot tall poplars on the south
side which shade the nearby seedlings too soon in the day while the poplar root
systems keep growing back into the chestnut planting holes. Five of these
tiny seedlings finally died. The survivors in the first two rows are
four, each at one foot tall; four, at two feet tall, and one at seven feet;
however, the last is in an upper row not crowded by the big poplars. Normal
chestnuts of the same age growing in the rest of the rows are 12 to 14 feet
tall.
You may remember our discovery last year at the Airport plot where
two chestnuts had no gall wasp damage, while all the others had a major
infestation. Those two possibly gall wasp resistant chestnuts were parents of
the 42 nuts we planted in 2003 and 2004.
Several of them are over 20 feet tall and many more are over ten feet,
so we anticipated an early nut crop this summer. As it turns out, we might get
a few, but not enough to share: only one chestnut made any flowers so I tied
bunches of catkins on the tips of branches to entice bees to pollinate these
flowers.
GALL WASPS:
We suffered a major gall
wasp infestation in our yard chestnuts this May, dealt with by cutting out two
grafts and 10 seedlings, all well over ten feet tall, thus it was the only way
to get rid of the problem. We also cut the top and many upper branches out of
the Pie chestnut in front of our dining room window, so it is not as beautiful
as it used to be. The grafts are finished, but the seedlings can start again
clean, and some of them have new sprouts already six feet tall. We found and destroyed a small number of
galls at the Airport plot, not nearly as many as last year. A sprout from one
Miles and one Ruth (cut down last year at the Airport) are growing tall, and
three of the others we have grafted with newer selections. We also found a discouraging number of galls
in the Martin American Chestnut Planting, picked them out by hand, stuffed into
plastic bags to the dump. I read in the
Nutshell (NNGA 101st annual report) that the natural predators of gall wasp
develop along with them inside the galls, but choose not to take the chance
that these predators may have reached our area.
AMBROSIA BEETLE:
This pest caused extensive
damage and some big losses. Arthur Frisbee, from North Carolina warned years
ago that this beetle, said to attack only injured trees, thinks grafts are
injured trees. In a forest plot out in Giles County, we had six grafts killed
by ambrosia beetle. When you cut a graft at the base, you are usually cutting
into the stock, but there is a small chance that a piece of the graft, covered
with soil, may send up a new sprout; this does not usually happen.
In addition, we had infestations on ten healthy seedlings at
Mountain Lake and in the Hotine plot as well as a few
grafts at the Airport and Mountain Lake. We cut all seedlings and heavily
infested grafts in one-foot segments, to be able to examine them for the
telltale pinholes, and put all infested wood in triple plastic bags, to the
dump. Again, we chose the strongest new shoots and cut out the others. Some of these new
shoots are also six feet tall.
On two very large grafts, we found only a few pinholes near the
base and tried to save them with applications of permethrin,
once a week or after each rain. We saved one.
In every plot where this pest made an appearance this year, we shall
have to spray all grafts and small seedlings from the base to five feet up,
beginning in April 2012 to prevent further losses of grafts and time.
HYPOVIRULENCE
Over the years, we have
received many requests to share the hypovirulent
strains of the blight fungus with which we inoculate the first cankers on
chestnuts in our breeding program that demonstrate blight resistance. We are not permitted to share them because
they are under a special USDA license for use in research under Gary’s direct
supervision.
OUTSTANDING COOPERATORS:
Thanks again to John Buschmann
for supporting ACCF research and plot maintenance in the Lesesne.
Thanks to Matthew, Hannah, Grace & Luke
Griffin for folding, applying stamps & labels, stuffing & sealing
envelopes to get out last summer’s newsletter.
Many thanks for harvest help from Lise
& Harry Cooper, Carol Croy, Rick
Gendreau, and Vicky & Eli Lewis.
If you wish to volunteer for the 2011 harvest, please e-mail me at allaccf@gmail.com and suggest a week day after September 15, when you may be able
to help.
More thanks to Lise & Harry
Cooper, for helping with replanting at Turkey Run. Special
thanks to Karl Cooper for cutting many trees at Turkey Run to put more
sun on a few small seedlings and make room for 12 more planting places.
In future newsletters, the research plots on our virtual tour will
be quite different: the rest are not laid out on a grid, like an orchard
enclosed within the forest, but are planted or grafted at random in groves as
the forest grows. We now have many more
chestnut research plots than there are days in the week. So we must limit
ourselves to maintenance, improvement, and perhaps, expansion in a few plots.
But that was not our dream. We have imagined all-American
chestnuts growing in each new forest opening on ideal sites in the whole
eastern forest formerly occupied by American chestnut. We will need lots of help to accomplish this,
and we believe seasoned chestnut growers will be most able to create successful
forest projects.
Some of you are raising a few or several yard chestnuts, some are
making large orchards and others are making forest groves. If you are in the
first category above and have run out of yard space, we urge you to consider branching
out and putting your experience growing chestnuts to use in a forest setting on
public lands. A few of our cooperators are already doing this; we need many
more to join them. State and Federal foresters make very good cooperators; they
welcome volunteer forest improvement projects and help with site selection.
When you work near a forest service road, the same pickups, motor
cycles and SUVs, carry woodcutters, hikers, campers or hunters past you. One
will stop to ask what you are planting. “American chestnuts” you say, and often
you have a new friend. After a few years on the job, most of the passersby, as
well as nearby cabin dwellers wave and many express thanks for your work. It is the best job in the world.
We look forward to reading your reports and thank you for your
work.
Respectfully submitted,
Lucille Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor Emeritus Plant Pathology, Virginia Tech
Ed Greenwell, Vice President & Director of
Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical Engineer, McEwen, TN
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Professor Emeritus Chemistry, Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer,
Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Dave McCurdy, Director & Nursery Superintendent Emeritus, Raleigh, NC
Dedicated to the
restoration of American chestnuts
American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation
2010 Newsletter
Forest Service Road 708, Newport, Virginia
24128
Dear Friends and
Cooperating Growers:
Without a
computer for six weeks, I may have lost many e-mails. Please resubmit your
unanswered comments and questions with your Annual Report and chestnut request.
GRAFTING:
This year I sent
no scion wood to cooperators. I was just too busy. The record snowfall closed
forest roads and off-road paths, none of which are plowed, thus most research
plots could not be reached until March 11. This made it impossible to do
planting and grafting preparations a little at a time, as usual, through the
months of January and February. All that work was squeezed into two weeks. Of
50 grafts I made, 12 are growing, improving five different plots.
AIRPORT VIRTUAL
TOUR:
Our most senior
cooperators and grafters are familiar with this plot which we reclaimed in
2000, from a 1976 ACCF-Virginia Tech planting of Dietz chestnuts, like those in
the original Lesesne plantation. But here we had only
15 rows of 10 each, on 10-foot centers, and Garys
tests, found no blight resistant chestnuts. So the plot was abandoned and soon
overgrown in poison ivy, bittersweet, autumn olive, multiflora
rose, Virginia creeper and blackberries.
In 1999 the
Virginia Tech Grounds crew cut the first five rows near ground level, to make a
wonderfully compact and level grafting plot, easily accessible off-road (except
only in winter 2010, when two-foot drifts covered the trail through the hay
fields.) Horticulture students helped us clear the vines and briars and spread
wood chips in the other ten rows. The idea was to improve the first five rows
by grafting blight resistant chestnuts, while leaving the other 10 rows to grow
wild, as they do in forest clearings and edges, to demonstrate the difference,
with blight resistant American chestnuts growing beside American chestnuts that
have no blight resistance.
Many trees had
already been lost in the no-resistance rows, and those remaining were
multi-stemmed, with many dead trunks of increasingly larger sizes. Continuous
cycles of blight and death produces hypovirulence in
the blight fungus. The combination of hypovirulence
with the ever-increasing root systems permitted these chestnuts to make trunks
up to eight inches in diameter before the blight killed them. They gave large
annual nut crops which we sent out to nut grafters or as gifts to be eaten, for
as long as we were able to gather this harvest. Not many years passed before
all the invasive species had returned and once again we abandoned these ten
rows. It was too much work, at the bottom of a very long list. We let the
animals have those chestnuts.
Meanwhile, the
five managed rows became a great asset to our breeding program. Miles and Ruth,
growing in the steeply sloping Martin American Chestnut Planting up on Salt
Pond Mountain, first selections from our first generation of breeding, were
making flowers high in the crown, out of reach. We grafted their scions
alternately, in the first two rows, and about 10 grew very rapidly in the rich
soil, in full sun. By 2002, using low branches we made second-generation
intercrosses (planted in the Lesesne) and we have
been sending their open-pollinated chestnuts all these years to our
cooperators.
Each spring I
used to hold grafting clinics here by appointment. We stopped this practice
because each clinic took up a morning in prime grafting time and often it
happened to fall on the finest day for grafting: no wind, high humidity,
temperature between 55 and 60 F, overcast skies. On such a day, I would imagine
that I could have made seven grafts, all of which might have succeeded. I could
not dismiss that dream. (If you are determined to learn how to graft, you can
do it by reading the instructions on our Web site and keeping scrupulous notes
of your work, so that you are able to learn from most of your mistakes, as John
Elkins, Ed Greenwell and I have done.)
You may better
understand how I have become a stingy grafting cooperator,
if you consider that each graft requires a minimum of one-half hour to make and
has at best a 20% chance of success. (These figures are for whip-grafting in
the field; I have come to consider other grafts to be a waste of my time.)
Also, new grafts require weekly inspection, to be sure that the union is always
covered with soil. Thus, in ten years of
grafting, we do not have a single uninterrupted row of five grafts in this plot
(the elusive Bingo!). At the end of last summer, we had 23 grafts. Two grafts succeeded this spring, so now we
have 16: blight below the exposed union killed one, and Ambrosia beetle had
killed another before I noticed its telltale pinholes. Then we paid a tree
service to cut away the remaining Miles and Ruth grafts (several were a foot in
diameter) in late April, after I had discovered the plot was infested with gall
wasp.
This is our first
experience with gall wasp. We must thank Giorgio Maresi
who had recently sent excellent pictures of the deformed leaves, curled up
around pinkish galls. While checking my grafts, one of these leaves literally
hit me in the eye. Instead of the planned hour, I spent half the day cutting
infested leaves and stuffing them into plastic bags; we returned daily to the
same work for two weeks. Galls in the tops of Miles and Ruth were out of reach,
and since we are now selecting from the next generation in this breeding line,
we decided to destroy those big grafts. (Miles and Ruth survive in two other
plots.) However, this was just the tip of the infestation: it appears to have
entered via the chestnuts abandoned in the adjacent overgrown ten rows. We cut
paths to these chestnuts so the contractor could cut all of them. There were
poison ivy and bittersweet vines up to three inches in diameter. We poisoned
the chestnuts and vines.
The Airport plot
is subject to extremely high gusts of wind. We must keep all grafts here staked
for at least two years, while elsewhere, we usually remove the support stakes
at the beginning of the second growing season. One week after the Miles and
Ruth grafts had been removed, high winds flattened to
the ground a 15-foot graft and left two larger, newly exposed grafts
permanently listing to the east. The union on the downed graft was intact, so
it lived several weeks before dying. What appeared at first to be the
destruction of ten years work has yielded significant benefits.
From now on the Airport plot is free from inferior pollen. The surviving grafts
represent at least nine original sources of blight
resistance, and possibly 10, because one graft is of a volunteer which may
bring an additional source of blight resistance into the mix.
Eleven of the grafts are original sources; three, including the volunteer, are
first-generation intercrosses; and two are second-generation intercrosses with
some of their parent trees present in duplicate in this plot. All were selected
for blight resistance. Thus, future Airport harvests should produce a higher
percentage of chestnuts inheriting blight resistance.
That is the
smaller advance. The biggest deal we gleaned from careful observation. On one
individual, represented by two grafts, a large 10-year old and a three-year
old, both surrounded by chestnuts infested with the gall wasp, we were unable to
find any galls. On another unrelated chestnut, also represented by two grafts,
we found just a few galls. This suggests, the first may be highly resistant to
gall wasp, and the second, may also be resistant to this pest. It just so
happens that we made the first intercross between these two individuals in
2002, and they may begin bearing nuts within a year or two. We shall send as
many of these nuts as possible to southern growers, where gall wasp is most
troublesome.
GALL WASPS
lay their eggs in
the buds on the new growth of that year, the very same twigs from which we
collect scion wood. (Since I collect most of our scion wood at the Airport, it
is after all quite lucky that I sent none to cooperators this past winter.) The
wasps lay eggs over a three week period. Spraying is not effective because it
cannot penetrate the galls, but must hit the flying insects, which may hatch
out over a period of a month or more. For the time being, our April infestation
appears to be under control, but we must continue to be vigilant each spring,
because Chinese chestnuts grow within a half-mile of the Airport.
CHESTNUT
FLOWERING
usually begins when
seedlings are seven to 10 years old; the lower number applies in very rich
sites in full sun. The first year, often the chestnut makes only male catkins;
the second year, it usually makes some female flowers also; and thereafter, if
it has a pollinator, the tree may flower in abundance and produce regular nut
crops. The female flowers usually show up about ten days after the catkins.
The pollinator is
sometimes a problem, because American chestnuts bloom at various times. For
instance, our earliest chestnut blooms a week before Chinese chestnuts, so that
most years it can produce nuts only by controlled pollination, using pollen
that was stored in the freezer from the previous year. This year we pollinated
that chestnut on June 5. At the other end of the spectrum, our latest bloomer
usually has no receptive female flowers till the second week in July, when all
other male pollen has dropped; we pollinated it on July 10, using pollen
collected on another chestnut in mid-June. Most American chestnuts bloom during
the weeks in between these two extremes.
Blooming time may
be altered by a freeze or heavy frost in late April or May. Chestnuts that have
bloomed only once or twice, may make no flowers in
such a year. While those regularly bearing chestnuts which usually bloom early
or in the middle range of flowering time, may bloom as much as two weeks later
than usual. In one forest plot, this Mays freeze hit a graft of our earliest
chestnut, causing its catkins to be available for the first time when a much
later chestnut graft came into bloom.
Variety in
blooming time is expressed among the progeny of each chestnut, each generation.
This characteristic favors survival by assisting regeneration. Very heavy rains
falling when female flowers are receptive can prevent pollination, but because
of the various flowering schedules, this is not likely to affect all the
chestnuts in a stand.
GROWERS REPORTS:
As of October 13,
116 cooperators have reported 2,397 surviving all-American
chestnuts. We shall add to these numbers your as
reports come in. We have 636 chestnuts I planted in the Virginia research
plots. A late freeze hit most of the newly emerging seedlings in two plots; all
but a few of them recovered and put out new shoots. However, the setback in
root development left them highly vulnerable to June drought, which killed half
of this years seedlings in
the Lesesne before we were able to water. Drought
conditions also lead to more vole attacks, thus three more three-foot tall
chestnuts are dead, their tap roots eaten. We water only the chestnuts which
are not yet two feet tall. The water often must be carried uphill for a
distance of 150 yards, reminding us that it is never a bad idea to limit annual
planting to 10 chestnuts. On the bright side, abundant spring rains once again
resulted in record growth on the larger trees in most plots. By early July,
many had new growth exceeding six feet, and in those plots where the freeze did
not hit, some new seedlings were already two feet tall.
OUTSTANDING
COOPERATORS:
Thanks again to John Buschmann for supporting ACCF
research and plot maintenance in the Lesesne.
Many thanks for
harvest help from Lise & Harry Cooper, Carol Croy, Brian Hartnett, Vicky & Eli Lewis, Joe Norberg, and Albert Ward. If you wish to volunteer
for the 2010 harvest, please e-mail me at allaccf@gmail.com and suggest a week
day after September 15, when you may be able to help.
More
thanks to Lise, Jenny, Lizzie & Harry Cooper,
Vicky & Eli Lewis for helping install bat houses in those forest research
plots which are within a half-mile of a water source. Bats eat
thousands of insects per day. This is an experiment to see if they may help
control ambrosia beetle, gypsy moth and/or gall wasp.
Yet more thanks,
to Jenny & Lizzie Cooper at UNC Asheville & Raleigh, for giving up two
days of their spring break to make protection cages and plant chestnuts.
We look forward
to hearing from you and thank you for reporting.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF
Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor Emeritus Plant Pathology, Virginia Tech
Ed Greenwell,
Vice President & Director of Tennessee chestnut
projects, Electrical Engineer, McEwen, TN
John Rush Elkins,
Secretary, Professor Emeritus Chemistry, Concord College, WV
William
Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Dave McCurdy,
Director & Nursery Superintendent Emeritus, Raleigh, NC
Dedicated to the
restoration of American chestnuts
American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation
2009
Newsletter
Send your report via accf-online.org/greport.htm
or to
Forest Service Road 708,
Newport, Virginia 24128
Dear Friends and Cooperating
Growers:
This year we take you on a
virtual tour of the Martin American Chestnut Planting on Salt Pond
Mountain, Virginia, at 3,500 feet elevation. Gary Griffin and John
Elkins made the original planting in 1976 on land given to Virginia Tech
by Ruth and Miles Horton for American chestnut research and dedicated to
the memory of Miss Flossie Martin, a biology teacher who awakened in
Miles a lifelong interest in science.
Gary and John laid out the
planting holes with 10 foot spacing: 13 rows of nine and one row of six. They
planted one-year- old all-American first-generation intercross seedlings,
representing four of the parent trees which at that time had passed blight
resistance tests: Floyd, Gault, MacDaniels
and Weekley. Among these intercrosses they also
planted, for reference purposes, open-pollinated chestnuts of two kinds:
Wisconsin seedlings from outside the range of the blight fungus and Pease 16
seedlings from West Virginia. They planted at least one of each open-pollinated
variety per row.
The planting site slopes steeply
toward the southwest with woods on the other three sides. The clearing was made
by the previous owners to grow feed corn. After the limestone-based soil had
been played out, it became a hay field. This plot was planted before Gary had
made his extensive forest ecology studies, so we did not realize that we were
creating a worst-case scenario site: not the preferred north to eastern
exposure, but open to severe winter stress and late freezes in spring, the
wrong soil type, not acid and not well-drained in spite of the slope, and the
upper layer of soil was seriously depleted, leaving available fertility well
below the surface.
It was a struggle to get them
established. At first, we used compost and newspaper mulch to improve the soil,
and for many springs and summers we carried water to each seedling. For years
they grew very poorly, at less than half the normal rate, until the taproots
finally reached deep below the surface soil and into more fertile ground. Then
they took off. In 1988, with 78 of the original 117 surviving, Gary and John
inoculated all chestnuts over 1.5 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH)
with a killing strain of the blight fungus to test for blight resistance. The
Wisconsin trees died within a month or two; the Pease did a little better. Gary
and John observed canker growth over a two-year period, and judged three of the
intercrosses to have resistance equal to or better than the parent trees.
John Elkins made some
second-generation intercrosses and planted 12 of the seedlings to fill spaces
in the rows in 1993. Over the last eight years, we have filled most of the
other spaces by direct-seeding chestnuts. In 2000 and 2004, we planted
controlled, first-generation intercrosses representing three more parent trees.
In 2005 through 2008 we planted open- pollinated chestnuts from a plot which
contains only blight resistant chestnuts and represents five original sources
of blight resistance. These nuts are the same as those we have been sending to
growers in recent years; most of them may be second or third-generation natural
intercrosses.
Walking through the Martin
American Chestnut Planting today, you see seven chestnuts over 30 feet tall,
with the tallest at about 44 feet, six chestnuts over 20 feet tall, and another
six over 10 feet tall; these are original survivors, 1993 seedlings, several of
my grafts which date from 1995, and a few are seedlings from nuts where the
planting spot was much improved on the second try. Thirty-four more chestnuts,
ranging between 9 feet and 6 inches tall, are mostly from direct-seeded nuts;
one is a new graft this year. You will also see many more
chestnuts, between 10 and two inches in diameter have been cut at the base
and are making stump sprouts; these are for future grafting opportunities.
Every chestnut smaller than 30 feet tall is enclosed in a wire cage, because
the trees are a target for deer rubs which easily strip the smooth bark, and of
course, deer eat unprotected sprouts.
You probably would expect to find
American chestnuts that are 25 to 30 years old to be much taller than 44 feet,
and you would be correct. Leaving aside their slow start, the relatively small
stature of the older chestnut stems in this planting is mostly due to cutting;
many are second or third shoots to emerge when the
previous trunk was cut at the base because it was seriously disfigured or had
the top killed by blight.
A new shoot on an established
root system has a greatly improved chance to reach a larger size before its
first blight attack. Therefore, because of the severity of conditions on this
site, we have given many of the original chestnuts two or three chances to make
a better blight resistance test score. However, the first selections are still
the best, so this summer we hired a tree service to cut at ground level 52
trees that did not pass inspection. This leaves the orchard with only
blight-resistant chestnuts able to produce pollen and nuts. It also greatly
increased the sunlight available to stimulate more rapid growth on the smaller
chestnuts and for next year’s grafts.
This year’s Martin American
open-pollinated nuts will represent various combinations among six original
parents (Floyd, Gault, MacDaniels,
Thompson, Nathan Pease, and Ragged Mt.) in first-, second- or third-generation
natural intercrosses. Six additional original sources of blight resistance are
represented in the seedlings and grafts which will flower here in the near
future.
In addition to the harsh
environment and continuous blight infections, this site has weathered two
serious insect problems. The ambrosia beetle attacked in 2006 and again in
2008, both times killing or setting back by a few years each, from two to four
of our grafts. So we must keep a close lookout each March for the telltale
pinholes on the lower half of stems smaller than 3 inches DBH and be prepared
to spray all trunks of that size with Permethrin. A
much bigger threat by gypsy moth was stopped this May by a large countywide
spraying effort followed by almost two months of above-normal rains which
appear to have interrupted reproduction of the pest.
The stress factors on this site
are not completely unrelieved: because of the poor upper soil, weeds do not
seriously compete with the young seedlings, and because the soil is very
compact, voles have not created the general nuisance we battle in the richer
and well-drained forest sites. About five years ago, the Mary Moody Northern
Foundation purchased a large block of mountain land which includes the
Martin American Chestnut Planting and three smaller related chestnut
plots. This foundation is deeply concerned in environmental projects that
engage the local public, in other words, exactly our kind of folks; they make
our work easier by keeping the plots mown.
MOST FREQUENT PROBLEMS
Poor germination is most often a result of improper storage and can be
avoided by planting chestnut seed when it arrives. In the north, however, where
heavy snow covers the ground for a month or so, the chestnuts may be better off
stored as follows: put the seednuts in a mixture of
50/50 sand and peat moss, very slightly damp, inside a plastic peanut butter
jar, in which several small holes have been drilled for air exchange; then bury
the jar under about 4 inches of soil inside your first planting hole,
well-marked with flagging. Plant the seed by February.
Poor transplant success is common for American chestnuts because the long taproot
is easily injured; avoid this problem by direct-seeding the nuts in their
chosen site as described in the handout which accompanies the seed.
Yellow or yellow-green foliage
that is smaller than normal indicates poor
seedling health. In or near the
Yellowish, unhealthy foliage may also indicate that voles are
attacking the root system; this is common in rich, well-drained woodland soils,
new clearcuts and old orchards. Probe
inside cages with a stick. Wherever it sinks suddenly apply a vole
poison in the tunnel. Last year’s trial of Molemax
and other smelly deterrents failed; poison is necessary for vole control. Voles
kill chestnuts is surely as a root rot.
Tree shelters of all descriptions, vented or not, are unsuitable for
protecting American chestnut seedlings. The only exception to this rule is the
8-inch tall, short shelter which we sink 3 inches into the soil in the middle
of each wire cage for first-season protection of direct-seeded chestnuts. The
taller shelters are too small in diameter to accommodate healthy chestnut leaf
and stem growth; they are also very efficient blight incubators, and, just like
a dense weed growth inside protection cages, they hide the first signs of
blight, which often occur at the base and rapidly kill seedlings smaller than
an inch in diameter.
Basal cankers, if detected early, may be controlled by making a mud pack
to cover the canker with moist soil. This can give the
seedling another chance to reach 1.5 inches in diameter, the minimum
size for blight resistance expression to be useful.
2009 CHESTNUT DISTRIBUTION
Our directors have discussed the
many pros and cons of seedling distribution, and have decided to discontinue
it. Henceforth we shall distribute only seednuts.
This should decrease my data entry duties by half, leaving more time to
spend in the research plots.
If you have already signed a copy
of the enclosed agreement and your information is unchanged, please write, NO
CHANGE boldly across that side, and fill in your nut request. If you have
already reported, please write REPORTED ONLINE boldly on the reverse side, and
fill in your member number from the envelope label. This will save more office
time, thanks very much. Everyone with a Grower Agreement and current Report
on file may order 10 chestnut seeds.
Most of the 2009 chestnuts we
will be sending to growers in late October will come from the two plots which
contain only blight-resistant chestnuts, and the chestnuts collected in other
plots will come from blight-resistant mother trees, the ones which are nearest
to the best pollen sources. Nevertheless, blight resistance may not be
regularly inherited among the progeny. We still rely on annual reports from you
to learn how many and what percentage of these nuts express blight resistance.
HARVEST
This year we guess the harvest
may begin around September 16 on the early trees; therefore, help will probably
be needed most the week of September 21, and possibly also the first half of
the following week. To help out, please e-mail Lucille at allaccf@gmail.com
(my new address), mention the date when you plan to come, and I will get back
to you. We harvest in the morning, usually beginning at nine. Harvest helpers
may request additional chestnuts if they bring their own collection bag and are
prepared to take chestnuts in the burs to store and process at home.
ACCF REPORTS
The
total American chestnut seedlings and nuts from the 2008 harvest which were
planted by our associates and cooperating growers this past winter and spring
was 2,846.
The
total American chestnuts surviving in Virginia research plots, not including
the chestnuts cut back at ground level for grafting stock, is 483 grown from
seedlings and seednuts, of which 66 are new this
year, and 80 grafts. As of October 22, we have received reports from
133 growers of 3,415 chestnuts surviving in their ACCF plots.
OUTSTANDING COOPERATORS
Many thanks to UNC freshmen, Elizabeth
Cooper and Caroline Robinson, who volunteered two days of their fall
break to make a new chestnut research plot. They constructed 40 wire cages, drove
stakes and broke new, difficult ground to dig 40 18-inch holes; the second day,
they worked in a driving rain to complete the job. We planted there by
direct-seeding 36 chestnuts representing the next step up in our
blight-resistance breeding program. Twenty-nine of these seedlings are growing
well.
Thanks again, to Carol Croy, Virginia
Shepherd and George Richardson who helped us to harvest the
chestnuts we sent to growers in 2008.
More
thanks to the National Wild Turkey
Federation which has continued generous support of our work.
Whenever we plant a nut or make a
graft, we are committed to defending that chestnut like a mother hen, her
chicks. Until it is big enough to express blight resistance (1.5 inches DBH),
we give every benefit of protection and assistance, sometimes including second
and third chances to demonstrate a better reaction to blight infection. But
science must trump sentiment or there could be no progress in blight-resistance
breeding.
In your own American chestnut project,
you may elect to follow the same plan of continuous improvement for blight
resistance, and you will have at least 20 years, perhaps 30 years, head start, as compared to where we began in the 1970’s. Or
you may have a different goal, such as adding American chestnuts for their mast
crop, to support more game on your lands. In this case, you still must defend
the young chestnuts till they develop robust root systems, so that stems killed
by blight can be rapidly replaced by new stems and the nut crop may be
dependable, even though nut-bearing individuals within the planting may vary
from year to year. Such a goal does not require cutting out any of your
chestnuts, so it may be achieved within 10 to 12 years if the site is rich and
the chestnuts are kept in full sun.
The nut-crop plan is flawed only
if you have extensive managed woodlands and hope that nuts from your original
stand may seed future clearings as more space becomes available. In this case,
your seednuts would be inferior to those produced in
a chestnut planting that has been managed like a research plot, for continuous
improvement of blight resistance.
Of course, the choice is yours.
We thank you again for your donations, and look forward to your annual reports.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille Griffin, Executive
Director
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology, Virginia
Tech
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president, retired Superintendent, Clements
State Tree Nursery, Raleigh, NC
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Research Chemist, Professor Emeritus of
Chemistry, Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical
Engineer, McEwen, TN
Dedicated to the restoration of
American chestnuts
American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation
2008 Newsletter
Send your report via our Online
Report Form or to
Forest Service Road 708, Newport,
Virginia 24128
Dear Friends and Cooperating Growers:
In special thanks to the many volunteers who have helped us reclaim the Lesesne research plot, we feature a virtual
tour.
The Lesesne is surrounded by state forest lands of
the same name which were donated by the DuPont family to the Virginia Dept
of Forestry (VDF) for American chestnut research. Al Dietz,
cooperating with the VDF, planted here in 1969, on a gentle south-facing slope
at the foot of the Blue Ridge in deep fertile loam soils. His original
planting was about 10 acres, divided into three squares with 40 rows and
columns in each square and the chestnuts planted on 10 foot centers.
These chestnuts had been exposed to ionizing radiation in an experiment aiming
to induce mutations favorable to blight resistance.
Over the years, nearly all of Al's chestnuts have died from blight, and then
from deer browsing the new shoots and from intense competition of other trees
when state funds for maintenance were cut. With the exception of the
roadways leading up to and between the squares and the western edge of the
middle square the planting disappeared in a tangle of vines and other trees.
The western edge was saved because there in 1980, Bruce Given and
John Elkins of our informal American chestnut research group had worked
with Tom Dierauf (VDF) to
graft large survivors into the stocks of the blight-killed chestnuts. In
1982 and '83, the first blight cankers on the grafts were
inoculated with a mixture of hypovirulet
(weak) strains of the blight fungus obtained from Jack Elliston in
Connecticut. Research conducted by Virginia Tech graduate
students, supported by the ACCF has shown some of these hypovirulent
strains have spread, over the past 26 years, throughout the grafted
trees. These grafts inspired me to add to the collection.
My scope was quite limited until John Buschmann
approached the VDF to enlarge our edge by clearing an acre, or the first 24
columns on the west side. Then, in 2002, a National Wild Turkey
Federation grant made it possible for us to clear and plant 5 rows of
second-generation all-Americans (Ruth x Miles) along the downhill, southeast
side. The following winter, once again the VDF pitched in to clear the
rest of the square, making planting room in which we have established several
additional breeding lines by direct-seeding nuts beginning in 2003; they are
first- and second-generation intercrosses among six different parent trees.
In each case, before clearing, we flagged all the chestnut stems to be saved
for resistance testing; most failed the tests. On the western side we
left many failed chestnuts to witness the continuous cycles of death by blight
followed by regeneration via root sprouts; we use the others for grafting
stock.
Mainly I graft the parent trees whose progeny we have been planting here, but
also, some related chestnuts, such as "Ed", with its first blight
canker swollen, a very strong-growing volunteer from
a Virginia Tech breeding orchard, and "Joyce" an advanced intercross
(Parent x F1) made by John Elkins in 1993, which has thrived with blight
infection in a severe environment.
Because foresters don't like to cut down beautiful trees, in addition to all
the chestnuts, ranging in age from one to 49 years old, there are four large
tulip poplars and one oak among the upper eastern rows and in the space between
the upper and lower rows. Probably around 20 years old and up to 60 feet
tall, they illustrate the site's growth potential.
We have kept to the approximate 10 foot spacing between chestnuts, but more
than doubled the space between rows at VDF request for vehicle travel. In
the center of the square, the VDF bulldozed the cleared trash trees to fill a
big dip; a similar dump is at the beginning of the first row at the bottom of
this dip. These places have become havens for birds, blackberries, and
snakes. In rows two through 5, many chestnuts planted in the dip died of
apparent root rot, and we have left most of these
spaces planted in grass. We also left a broad space between the upper and
lower rows and a lesser one between the western side and the eastern
rows. These are buffer zones against the spread of root disease.
In spite of watering, many of the seedlings planted in 2002 struggled for
several years, with yellowish-green leaves and little or no growth
increments, and many of them died in their first two years, before we
discovered that Phytophthora was a
problem here. We can guess how this soil-born
disease may have been introduced because it is endemic in Piedmont soils,
and the Lesesne is near the edge of the Piedmont:
it was probably transported here on the tires of vehicles that had driven in
infected fields or roadways.
After one of the big inspirational chestnut grafts died from root rot, Gary
cordoned off the area around the two nearby grafts whose root systems were in
contact with the dead tree to ward off foot travelers and inhibit deer.
Inside the cages where small seedlings had died, apparently from root rot, we
removed them, treated the soil with SubdueMax
fungicide drench and planted grass. We also spread grass clippings
around the outside of cages and sprinkled gypsum inside the cages of nearby
seedlings to help control the spread of this disease.
These measures cannot save the big chestnuts with extensive, deep root systems,
so Gary has been treating them with a combination of fungicides, painted on the
lower bark (where Phytophthora can
cause collar rot) or injected into the stem from whence it works down to the
roots. These treatments are experimental, but they have been used with
success in avocado orchards. He also covered the soil at the base of the
trunks with limestone gravel, to prevent splashing of soil onto the bark during
heavy rains. Other measures to contain the spread of Phytophthora:
vehicle traffic is minimized and restricted to the roadways; we treat shoes,
tools, gloves used in the infected area with 20% Clorox solution for two
minutes; the contract mower power-washes his equipment, does not mow within 24
hours of a rainfall, and begins at the top of the plot, working downhill and avoiding
the cordoned-off area.
Before we discovered the Phytophthora problem, weeds appeared to be the most trouble. This is
to be expected in any fertile site in full sun. Where the soil is deepest and in the dip, which holds moisture longest, by
August the weeds are over my head. I tried
tree mats to control weeds inside the cages; the tree mats encouraged
voles. We use Roundup between and outside the cages, and I hand-weed
inside the cages, once in winter and twice in the growing season. Weeding
one row can take an hour.
Probing for vole tunnels with a stick, at first I seeded the tunnels
with Prozap or another more expensive
poison. I found so many tunnels, I think chestnut roots must be the voles favorite food. They may graze on feeder roots of
seedlings for many years, severely stunting the growth (also causing
yellowish-green leaves), or in a drought they may be capable of consuming
the whole taproot, leaving a once three-foot tall chestnut seedling rootless and
leaning against its cage. In this way, I lost about a dozen seedlings
here last August. This year I tried Molemax
sprinkled inside the cages, in March and June, with extra doses whenever new
holes appeared or where my probe turned up new tunnels. This has been
more effective than poison (unless the poison had already knocked off most of
the vole population), and this summer most of the formerly stunted chestnuts
are thriving and many have doubled their size. I will
apply Molemax again in September. On the
chance that nutrition delivered via the leaves may assist recovery of the
chestnuts with vole-damaged root systems, I spray
the seedlings having poor leaf color with iron chelate and magnesium sulfate,
on alternating weeks.
NOTE: It is inadvisable to plant chestnuts in or near former apple
orchards because voles are famous apple orchard pests.
We plant empty spaces where chestnuts have died
from blight or voles by direct-seeding with members of the same family which
were open-pollinated on a precocious F2 graft or on one of the parent
trees. There are about 30 places to be re-seeded this winter.
In drought, watering the one- and two-year old chestnuts can take two
hours.
There is so much work to be done in this plot, we work here most Tuesdays.
On workdays November through January, we prepare planting holes,
direct-seed the nuts from the previous fall, erect protection cages and
transplant volunteers (planted by squirrels, often inside the cages). In February, I am collecting scions and preparing the stems to be
grafted beginning mid-March through April. In late spring and
summer, I try to cruise the whole plot, checking
and tying up the new grafts, straightening out any cages which the deer have
crashed into and looking for other problems, with a roll of flagging and a Sevin sprayer handy. Besides defoliation,
insects can wound the tiny stems of new seedlings, providing an entry for
blight before the seedlings are big enough to express resistance; they can take
out the leader of big seedlings. So I spray the newly planted
chestnuts and those leaders still within reach on the bigger chestnuts.
Among my Lesesne grafts, 7 are bearing nuts
and 4 others have made their first male flowers. Among the seedlings
planted in 2002, 38 have outgrown the 5-foot tall
cages and are enclosed in heavy-gauge, 4-foot cages with a bigger grid for
easier weeding inside cages. Eight of these are bearing nuts and an
equivalent number made first male flowers. Among the seedlings grown
from chestnuts direct-seeded in 2003, 17 have outgrown the 5-foot cages,
one made early flowers, and the tallest, at 18 feet, nearly equals the size of
the champion among the seedlings in the lower rows which had a two-year head
start! The glorious chestnut grafts of 1980 are showing no signs of
decline and producing big chestnut crops. For the time being, the
infection in their roots is under control.
The Lesesne is the largest of many research plots
where American chestnuts in our breeding program are under study, producing
information as well as chestnuts. Future newsletters will visit the other
plots.
Those of you who can travel and are unwilling to wait a year, may see one or
more of the other research plots by volunteering to help at harvest,
weekdays September 22 through October 10. To volunteer,
suggest a date when you may be able to help, by e-mail to accf@hughes.net
My 2008 Report shows a total of 469 chestnuts surviving, mostly from
direct-seeded nuts; 71 are new this year. I have 99 grafts, only 18 of
which are new, and 2 of these I shall have to destroy since they have been ID'd as American x Japanese hybrids. We shall no
longer solicit scions or identify leaves for others, because of the time
involved. To make the most of many possible intercrosses among the 12
parent trees already identified by our tests as blight resistant, we must
concentrate on them.
We received Reports from 209 growers in 2007,
reporting on 5,175 ACCF chestnut survivors. Where are the
rest of the reports? Since 1985 we have sent out about 160,000 American
chestnuts. Where have all these chestnuts gone? So far in 2008 we
have received 141 reports, of 4,286 survivors
At the 100th anniversary of the founding of the
American Phytopathological Society, Gary's invited
talk, reviewing and evaluating recent progress in the many branches of
American chestnut research, was very well received. Among the best
pictures shown were the two biggest Lesesne grafts
and John's "Joyce " chestnut. This is
the objective opinion of an interested observer.
Several years ago, Douglas J. Buege spent a
week, working with us in many of our chestnut plots, as part of his preparation
to write about the organizations working for American chestnut recovery.
His book has a few small errors and a final chapter with which we do not agree,
but otherwise we recommend If a Tree Falls for evenhanded reporting
written in engaging style. Available from Xlibris
Corp. at 1-888-795-4274 or Orders@Xlibris.com
Thanks to Outstanding Cooperators
who helped with the 2007 harvest: Philip Latasa, Tim Logan, Vincent Roberts, E. C. Horman, Harold & Rich Pierce, Albert Ward, Molly &
Shawn Hash.
who assisted in spring 2008
grafting: Eli Lewis and Elizabeth Cooper.
who probed for voles and made the
March Molemax application in the Lesesne:
Victoria & Eli Lewis.
who gave substantial funds that
support student technicians to keep chestnut research going in the laboratory
at Virginia Tech and pay the contractors for maintenance and improvements in
the largest research plots: The National Wild Turkey Federation, John
B. Buschmann, Carl Mayfield, and Violet Pesinkowski.
Our directors believe in the all-American chestnut breeding program. This
is the reason for the ACCF. We are working to restore 100% American
chestnuts in our forests. However, some of our growers have been hedging
their bets and also planting hybrid chestnuts developed elsewhere. The
nuts from their plantings will not be all-American; in this way the ACCF contribution
to American chestnut restoration could be diminished or erased.
To insure that American chestnut groves, established with our help, accurately
reflect our breeding program, we have changed the Grower Agreement form.
To order or request ACCF seedlings, chestnuts or scions, please fill out and
return the new form (link on front page).
If you have already reported via our Web site,
please indicate this on the Report form. The $20 donation to ACCF
research is unaffected by inflation, but please note that the nursery cost of
seedlings is valid only for the 2008 supply.
When we establish a chestnut planting, we try to plant on sites which are ideal
for growing American chestnuts, but a trouble-free chestnut site has not yet
been found. So if you want a successful chestnut planting, you must
commit to defend your work, in spite of all losses. You may e-mail me for
advice in dealing with trouble as it arises (accf@hughes.net), or write in the
space at the bottom of the Report Form. Your reports are most welcome; we look forward to them.
Respectfully submitted,
Lucille
Lucille Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology, Virginia
Tech
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president, retired Superintendent, Clements
State Tree Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Research Chemist, Professor Emeritus of
Chemistry, Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical
Engineer, Cookeville, TN
2007 Newsletter
Dear Friends and Cooperating Growers:
If you have reported on previous ACCF plantings and donated $20 in 2007, and if
we have a Grower Agreement Form on file in your name, you are welcome to
order American chestnut seedlings (through November) and/or nuts (until October
15). The 2007 cost per bundle of 25 or fewer American chestnut seedlings is
$27. Growers west of the Mississippi need to add $5 extra per bundle to
cover higher mailing cost. Please make the check payable to ACCF.
From the 2006 Virginia harvest we sent 3,880 nuts to cooperating growers, 4,698
nuts to nurseries in West Virginia, and last winter the nursery distributed
4,535 American chestnut seedlings to our cooperating growers.
HARVEST
You can either harvest chestnuts out of the trees in
their burs or off the ground where they have dropped. Following last falls abundant harvest, I thought we might switch to
this second method, eliminate the storage problem and the job of getting nuts
out of burs, and greatly decrease the numbers to be processed and sent to
growers. The squirrels have been good cooperators for several years
now, planting nuts in every one of our breeding orchards and even starting some
of them right in the row where there was a space, so I do not mind letting them
have a bigger share. However, Dave McCurdy tells me that the
nursery chestnuts will produce a much smaller crop this fall because of poor
pollination. So we must try for the big harvest once again, to be able to
send the nursery sufficient seed to make 2008 seedlings.
Chestnut trees are individuals with different
schedules: they do not all ripen their chestnuts at the same time, but
over a period of roughly two weeks which, in Virginia, usually begins in the
last week of September. Harvest starts when burs begin to crack open,
then the burs on that tree may be ready to pick. However, burs which contain
no viable nuts may crack open as much as two weeks early, and chestnut trees
often contain small numbers where the flowers happened not to be
fertilized. Furthermore, the first chestnuts to make
flowers contain much larger numbers of infertile nuts, because many of their
flowers were receptive before any pollen was available. So before
picking a tree we make sure that the cracked burs contain full, fat chestnuts,
not sunken blanks. We use hand clippers and a pruning pole that extends
up to 12 feet, and sometimes also a 6-foot ladder. Wearing leather gloves
we collect the burs into dog food bags, marked with the date and the name of
the mother tree and store them in a rodent-free cool place, in the basement or
in lidded garbage pails in the shade.
MANY THANKS to the volunteers who helped pick chestnut
burs in 2006: Matt Habersack, Albert
Ward, Nate Faris, Rich and Harold Pierce.
To help at harvest, e-mail Lucille at accf@hughes.net for a date and
directions. We will not begin picking the burs before the week of
September 24, leaving our yard at 9 a.m.; in
afternoons the first week of October, we should begin getting the nuts out of
the burs. We will not harvest on the weekends of September 22 and
29 because of home football games.
We check the storage bags once a week, dumping the contents
onto a picnic table to see if more burs have cracked open
. Wearing heavier leather gloves, we remove the nuts from their
burs, then return the unopened burs to their bags for
a few more days in storage, when they can be checked again. In years of
fall drought, some burs will not crack open unassisted: rolling the bur
back and forth underfoot sometimes does the trick. Burs which cannot be
opened by humans may be scattered in the woods, where the animals can deal with
them or they might be planted, expecting a very low percentage to make
seedlings.
WEEVILS are common throughout the range
of American chestnuts, especially in areas where Chinese chestnuts have been
planted and their nuts and burs are left to rot on the ground. The insect
lays its eggs in the young chestnut flowers and weevils (tiny worms) develop
inside the chestnuts and burs. The weevils over-winter in the ground
where they emerged from wasted nuts and spent burs to hatch out the following
spring and increase destruction of the next nut crop. To control weevils,
you make a clean harvest, burn or bury the burs and ruined nuts and encourage
your neighbors to do likewise.
PROCESSING & STORAGE
We must assume there may be weevils in the chestnuts, so we give our chestnuts
a hot water bath at 120 F for 20 minutes to kill weevils the same
day that the nuts come out of the burs. After the hot bath, we put the
chestnuts in a cold bath to stop the heat treatment. Once they are cooled
down, we pat them dry and spread them on newspapers till they are no longer
damp; then we pack them with slightly damp peat moss in plastic bags with a few
pin holes for air exchange and send them to growers.
Those chestnuts which we keep to plant in our research
plots, we place inside plastic mayonnaise or peanut butter jars in which small
holes have been drilled, in a 50/50 mix of sand and peat moss. We bury
the jars under about 4 inches of soil with grave markers. In Virginia the
chestnuts can be safely stored this way until early February, when many of them
will begin sprouting. We have direct-seeded chestnuts in November,
December, January and February and have had the best success with January
planting.
Growers who do not plant their chestnuts when
received, but store them in the refrigerator, should check the bag at least
once a week, to be sure the chestnuts are not drying out or getting wet and
becoming moldy, then turn the bag onto the other side. It is too easy to
forget this chore and let the seed spoil in storage; in this way, very large
numbers of seed are lost each year because growers cannot plant when they
receive them.
You may notice on the Grower Agreement Form that we will
be sending only 10 chestnuts per grower request. Growers who
need a larger number for a group project may obtain more by volunteering at
harvest, taking your chestnuts in the burs and doing the processing yourselves.
GYPSY MOTH has invaded Giles
County. Luckily, only one of our research plots was infested. I
first noticed tiny black caterpillars toward the end of May, picked off by hand
those within reach on our chestnuts, squashed them and sprayed with Sevin. Their numbers and size increased at an
alarming rate. It became necessary to visit the plot at least twice a
week, pick them off and stomp them, spray after each rain. While the tall canopy oaks were completely stripped of leaves,
followed by nearly all the other hardwoods and understory trees and bushes, our
chestnuts thrived in the additional sunlight. The battle to save
them lasted about 3 weeks, and we must expect a similar job in this plot in
future years. We noticed that the gypsy moth does not eat the leaves of
the tulip poplar or cucumber magnolia. This suggests that plantings
located in clearings within solid groves of these species (such as the Pandapas plot below our yard) may be less likely to suffer
a gypsy moth attack.
GROWERS REPORT
516 of the American chestnuts I planted are still
growing. Among them, 155 are new this
year, although 20 of these are not planted on their permanent sites but growing
in a yard nursery, for transplant following dormancy this November. These
20 are survivors from a bunch of rejects: they appeared during processing to be
in very poor condition, too discolored --suggesting possible mold-- or too dry
to send to growers or to the nursery; they are a great example of the benefit
of getting the seed right into the ground. In addition to the
numbers above, we have at least 3 dozen chestnuts which I did not count because
they were planted by the squirrels. My tallest seedling is Pacman E; I am unable to measure it without help. The
tallest grown from 2006 nuts are 2 feet. Six of my seedlings are bearing
nuts. Losses in our research plots were attributed to voles, root rot or
blight.
As of December 7, we have received 194 reports, for a total of 5,027
ACCF chestnuts reported. These numbers will be updated, as more
reports come in.
GRAFTERS REPORT
The past two years I have tried a few topgrafts
(whips), choosing stocks among sunny -side branches on blight resistant
American chestnuts which are growing in places where a pollinator is distant or
lacking. On the down side, because the grafted branches are only
1/4 inch in diameter, the graft is vulnerable to blight. However, these
grafts are much easier to execute because you are not lying on the ground and
there is nothing to inhibit making the cuts exactly as you want to, so I judged
it worth the risk. Two of my new grafts this year are topwork and although they
are still alive, their branches could go out this winter. Including
these, I have 19 new grafts growing in 4 sites. All but 2 (triangles) are whip grafts. Last winter we
lost several big grafts (voles eating the roots) and had the tops blight-killed
in several others. Surviving are 105 grafts, divided among 9 sites.
The tallest is Thorofare Gap, grafted in our yard in
1991. Forty-one of my grafts bear nuts, and their pollen is improving the
potential of the chestnuts harvested in 5 of our breeding orchards.
Yes, indeed, I am bragging a little, hoping to interest some
more of you in learning to graft, to improve your own chestnut plantings, like Harold
Pierce is doing in Alabama: he has 2 grafts from 2005, one from 2006 and 8 from 2007; all bark grafts into
chinquapin, they represent a very nice variety of blight resistant American
chestnuts. Health problems prevented Carl
Mayfield from grafting this year, but he has sent in a wonderful
report of 29 grafts surviving from past years; among them are nearly all
the American chestnuts of note in our breeding program.
NATHAN PEASE UPDATE
The Nathan nutgraft on which
we have been reporting the progress of blight-resistance trials has been killed
by a root rot. Another, smaller Nathan nutgraft
on a different site is in its second summer with blight. It has 7
burs.
WATERING
The bare-root seedlings from the nursery require one
gallon of water each week of drought through their first two growing
seasons. For successful planting, it is very important to plan for
this. On planting sites where watering may be a
problem, it is best to plant smaller numbers and consider starting from nuts
instead of seedlings.
Here in Virginia, we often have drought in August, and in
some of our plots, also in July and September. So we have been
establishing the Pandapas plot, by direct-seeding about 20 per year, with the goal of making a
grove of 100 American chestnuts in the National Forest 100 yards down the
mountain from our yard. We plant the nuts inside 8 inch tree
shelters, sunken a few inches in the ground and surrounded by wire cages to
deter raccoons. The small seedlings, less than two feet tall, can survive
on a quart of water per week of drought because their roots are equal to the
stems and sometimes larger (whereas nursery seedling roots were trimmed at
lifting). We remove the short tree shelters after the first growing
season.
In Turkey Run, the two research plots are both 100 yards up
the mountain from the access road. These plots were originally for
grafting, but so many of the native root systems have been weakened or killed,
we decided to plant about a dozen seedlings to make up the deficit.
Direct-seeding there just provided more food for a large vole
population. Therefore, this winter we started nuts in December by
the Moote Method, in a south-facing
window , as follows: using 18 inch tree shelters with newspaper liners,
we filled them with a 50/50 mix of damp peat moss & sand, let the fill
settle for a day and then press a nut one inch down, lay plastic wrap on
top until the sprouts begin to emerge (about one month), water sparingly, the
same as other house plants. In January and February we dug 2 foot
planting holes and put gallon milk jugs full of water, 3 each per hole, inside
the cages where animals could not steal the water. During a rainy
week in May, we transplanted the 6 to 8-inch tall seedlings. These tiny
seedlings also can get by on about a quart of water per week of drought.
Watering them in the cool of early morning through the summer heat was made
easy, with the supply already on site.
We thank the National Wild Turkey Federation for continuing generous
support of our cooperative research with the Virginia Department of Forestry,
USDA-Forest Service and Virginia Tech, breeding for blight
resistance, establishing and maintaining forest plots of ACCF all-American
chestnuts.
SPECIAL THANKS to more OUTSTANDING COOPERATORS:
John B. Bushmann, Ken
James, Carl Mayfield, and Violet Pesinkowski, long-term, big supporters of the
research for American chestnut restoration.
Philip Latasa once again
volunteered several days in the Lesesne last
winter, making the work go faster as we moved protection cages, removed tree
mats, weeded and treated the soil with gypsum (where we have had root-rot in
the past) and prepared new planting holes.
Remmington Bolt also volunteered several days last winter, pruning
trees at the Airport and cutting trees at Turkey Run.
These are a few of my favorite things: working
outdoors, the company of towhees, bluebirds and indigo buntings, watching
chestnuts grow, the green of new leaves unfolding on grafts and
seedlings, a complete row of American chestnuts, a fawn springing
up from its bed in the tall weeds, a newly mown or completely weeded research
plot, hundred-foot tall tulip poplars right next to a chestnut plot, the
perfect mornings in March and April when I graft with highest
expectations, the moments each year when the last newsletter is in the
mail, the last nuts are off to growers, the last orders, to the nursery, and
lots of reports about ACCF chestnuts. Thanks again for sending your
report.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille
Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor of Forest Pathology, Virginia Tech
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president, Superintendent, Clements State Tree
Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Research Chemist, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry,
Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical Engineer,
Cookeville, TN
Dedicated to the restoration of American chestnuts
American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation
2006 Newsletter
Send your report via
accf-online.org/greport.htm or to
2667 Forest
Service Road 708
Newport, Virginia 24128
Dear Friends and Cooperating Growers:
We shall distribute American
chestnut seedlings and/or nuts to growers who have made the annual $20 donation
to ACCF research, have sent in a completed Grower Agreement Form and have
reported in 2006 on the status of their previous ACCF planting projects.
There in
no monetary profit in our chestnut distributions. Each year we aim to
break even. After learning the nursery cost per bundle of seedlings, we
make a price to include the average cost of priority mailing east of the
Mississippi. The past few years, the Foundation has lost money on
seedling distributions, and this year the nursery costs have gone up one dollar
per bundle of 25. Therefore, the 2006 cost per bundle of 25 American
chestnut seedlings is $25. Growers west of the Mississippi need to add $5 per
bundle to cover a higher mailing cost. Please make all checks payable to
ACCF.
From the 2005 Virginia harvest
we sent 2,378 nuts to
cooperating growers, 7,541 nuts to the nursery in West Virginia, and the
nursery distributed 5011 American chestnut seedlings to our cooperating
growers.
MANY THANKS
Right up front, we wish to thank
all the volunteers who helped with the 2005 chestnut harvest: Tim Logan, Jack
Torkelson, Bruce Engen,
Gary Pace, Philip Latasa, Michael Linder and Steve
Prupas.
To pitch in at harvest, e-mail
Lucille at accf@hughes.net for a date and directions. We are likely to begin
picking the burs mornings on the week of September 18, leaving our yard at 9
a.m.; we should begin getting the nuts out of the burs in
afternoons by October 2. We will not be scheduling any harvest help for
the weekends of September 16, 23 and 30 because the home football games
monopolize local accommodations and highways.
A CHESTNUT PARABLE
Before the deer herd had become a
problem, perhaps 20 years ago, when we did not have enough cooperating growers
to plant all our seednuts, I used to plant the extras
along the edges of wildlife clearings in the National Forest or along the
Forest Service Road. Since they were planted without protection, nearly all of
those chestnuts have been eaten. Fewer than a dozen have survived continuous
munching and exist as tiny bushes. Just one among the hundreds planted has made
a great escape. It is almost 4 inches dbh and 30 feet
tall, growing in semi-shade on the steep bank opposite our driveway. Last
winter when it developed a fist-sized canker halfway up the trunk, I expected
the top to die this summer. However, in September, the only dead foliage is on
a lower branch. Gary's opinion of this tree, Keep an eye on it. In keeping with
the designations assigned to our yard seedlings, we named this chestnut, G-wiz.
This story illustrates several
points: First, it is unwise to assume that chestnuts can grow into trees
without benefit of protection cages. Second, the larger a chestnut can grow
before its first blight attack, the better its chances to express blight
resistance. Third, it is very important to note when a chestnut is first attacked
by blight and observe its reaction. Fourth, a chestnut which has not been
attacked by blight (blight free), however lovely to look upon, is not yet
anything special. Finally, one observation of a blight resistant reaction is
insufficient evidence; to be included in our breeding program, the chestnut has
to prove itself by surviving five to 10 additional years without death in its
crown.
ESCAPES
As more and more enthusiasts comb
the woods each year, more discoveries of large American chestnuts (over 10 inches
dbh) are reported. In most cases these chestnuts are
disease escapes, growing in the far north, south or western edge of the natural
range for the species or in a pocket sheltered from normal wind dispersal of
the blight fungus. They may be blight free or they may have grown quite
large before their first blight attack. Like my G-wiz chestnut, they also bear
watching. Although they are likely to die from blight within a few years, there
is always a chance that some may prove to have durable blight resistance.
RAISING AMERICAN CHESTNUTS
The ACCF chestnuts we distribute
to you, our cooperating growers, have much greater chances to express blight
resistance. We estimate at least 10%. The best possible result will be obtained
by growers who plant in well-drained, sandy loam soil, in full sun, on cove
slopes facing North to East at altitudes below 2,500
feet, protecting against injury to the trunk and leader of each seedling with
5-foot-tall wire caging, and regularly checking seedlings to deal with other problems
as they arise.
The most important site
requirement is that it be well-drained, to avoid the possibility of root rot. Growers who have
discovered root rot among their plantings should try to limit its spread by
fencing off and marking the area with bright flagging, avoiding work there when
the ground is wet, planting grasses but no seedlings downhill from the infected
area and treating tools, gloves and footwear with a 20% Clorox solution
immediately after use there (for more information, scroll down and see Phytophthora, in the 2003 Newsletter).
Tree mats (Forestry Suppliers, Inc.) are helpful in
controlling weeds inside the cages, but they also offer cover for voles
that can nip off the chestnut roots. Weeds and grasses are serious competition
to young seedlings and will greatly retard their growth, leaving the seedlings
at high risk for a longer period. In very fertile plots we are unable to
control the weeds without tree mats. We lift the mats two or three times a
year, pull weeds and put poison (Prozap) into vole
runs and tunnels.
Japanese beetles can be picked off by hand from lower
branches and hit with Sevin on leaves that are out of
reach. Where a plot is isolated, you can spread Milky Spore over the grassy
area to wipe out the Japanese beetle problem.
Ambrosia beetles can be eliminated if the infestation is
caught early in spring and sprayed with permethrin
through that growing season and again in March of the next year.
When a small chestnut seedling
(under an inch in diameter) is girdled by blight, the stem can be
cut near ground level and the wound covered with soil. If its root system
is healthy, a new shoot will take over, grow rapidly and give the chestnut a
second chance.
Pruning is not usually advised, but sometimes you
need to cut out blighted branches. This should be done in the fall when the
blight fungus is least active. Cover the wound with pruning seal. When a
chestnut has more than one stem, choose the strongest and cut the others below
ground level, cover these cuts with soil.
The first swollen blight canker
often occurs at the base of a chestnut. We advise making mud packs to
cover basal cankers through winter dormancy and keep them in place,
watering occasionally, until the seedling is 1.5 inches in diameter.
When the leaves of a seedling are not
dark green, there may be a nutrient deficiency. This can occur occasionally
in a plot where other seedlings are making healthy growth. We spray yellowish
leaves with magnesium sulfate and repeat the following week if their color
seems to be improving. Otherwise, spray chelated iron and
observe whether it makes a difference. This is quicker and cheaper
than individual soil or leaf tests for each plant.
About midway through the growing season, often
the leaves on the tips of branches in many chestnuts become rumply and curled up. This is an unidentified
disease, possibly a virus. It is not lethal, but it sharply curtails growth for
the rest of that season. This year we noticed that in many cases the curly
leaves are lighter in color than the other leaves on the chestnut. We
sprayed magnesium sulfate and iron chelate on the curly tips, on the
possibility that the chestnuts are deprived of nutrients. In many cases,
the curly leaves turned a darker green, and in several cases the seedling
resumed production of normal leaves.
GROWERS REPORT
This year I have 406 American
chestnut seedlings growing, of which 105 are from chestnuts planted last
winter. My tallest is Pacman E, which has had swollen
blight cankers since 1999. Six of my seedlings are bearing nuts. My losses are
nearly all attributed to voles or blight.
As of December 15, we have
received 152 reports, for a total of 10,092 ACCF chestnuts reported.
The numbers above will be updated, as more reports of chestnuts from ACCF
distributions come in.
GRAFTERS REPORT
In the past I have reported some
instances of high percentage takes with bark and cleft grafting methods.
Unfortunately, the numbers have not held up. Many bark and cleft grafts make
spectacular growth on incomplete unions, but for many years they remain highly
vulnerable to total wipeout from high winds. Comparing my notes, I was unable
to find anything to account for this uneven reliability. So I have given up on
them; beginning this year I am making only whip and triangle grafts. John
Elkins still has good success with bark grafts.
I have 90 grafts growing well, of
which only 9 are new this year. My tallest is Thorofare
Gap, at 50 feet; it was grafted in 1991 and has had swollen blight cankers
since 1998. Thirty-one of my grafts are bearing nuts. Losses are attributed to
incomplete unions and blight.
A few of our best grafters have
reported early: Carl Mayfield has 42 ACCF grafts, of which 7 are new this year.
Ed Greenwell has 49 grafts, of which the tallest is 25 feet. Carl &
Ed make mostly nut grafts. Harold Pierce has 6 grafts, of which 3 are new this
year; Harold grafts into chinquapin stocks.
NATHAN
PEASE UPDATE
The
end of this growing season finds Nathan Pease 25 feet tall, with no new blight
cankers and its one trunk canker surrounded by swollen tissue which has
expanded inward to cover a little of the exposed wood. We are watching it: two
years down and 8 to go.
We
thank the National Wild Turkey Federation for continuing generous support of our cooperative
research with the Virginia Department of Forestry, USDA-Forest Service
and Virginia Tech, establishing and maintaining forest plots of ACCF
all-American chestnuts.
The Pandapas plot now has 79 American chestnuts
growing. They are mostly first generation crosses among chestnuts that
were not represented in our original intercrosses: Thompson, NC Champ,
Ragged Mt, and JEB. We also planted some volunteers into which we plan to
graft the parent trees (above). From 2006, we have one JEB graft started.
The tallest chestnut in this plot is a 5-foot (Thompson x NC Champ) from a nut
planted in 2003.
At Turkey Run 18 grafts survive, and
two of these are new in 2006; all are in the
(Ruth x Miles) family, F2s. The two grafts killed in 2005 by ambrosia beetle
have sprouted back; time will tell whether these sprouts come from the grafts
or the blight-susceptible stocks. One graft made male flowers only.
Three
seedlings planted in 2002 survive; the tallest is 5 feet. We direct-seeded
twelve more chestnuts harvested from a (Ruth x Miles) F2, by planting them
inside 2-feet tall, fine-mesh hardware cylinders that were sunken a foot into
the soil which contained glass shards; most germinated, but all were killed by
voles. To plant these places we shall try one more time, in winter of
2007, using seedlings grown from an
open-pollinated F2. Most of the work in this plot is management, cutting
the other trees, so that the chestnuts are the tallest trees and wind dispersal
of pollen (perhaps next year) may be most efficient.
In
the Lesesne State Forest, Nelson
County, we have 234 seedlings mostly growing from various F1 and F2
intercrosses along with a smaller number of open-pollinated nuts from the
parent trees of these crosses. Sixty-four of these are from nuts planted last
winter; some are survivors from a test planting (to
determine whether Phytophthora was still a problem)
in 20 holes which were treated with SubdueMax drench
in 2004 and 2005 after the previous seedlings died of root rot. This
year, all seedlings and grafts in the lower half of the 3.4 acre plot received
a dressing of gypsum, which is said to disrupt Phytophthora
reproduction, and the grafts and seedlings near or downhill from the 1980
Thompson and Ragged Mt grafts (which have survived with blight control for 25
years and are now seriously threatened by Phytophthora
root rot) were surrounded with a thick mulch of grass clippings, to inhibit
spread of this root disease. Fungicide
treatments are being continued only within the canopy of the two large grafts,
above.
OUTSTANDING
COOPERATORS:
John
B. Bushmann, Ken James, Karl Mayfield, and Violet Pesinkowski
continue extensive support for and participation in American chestnut
restoration research.
Philip
Latasa was most helpful during the 2005 chestnut harvest and also volunteered
many hours working in the Lesesne, lopping off
ailanthus, digging and preparing the planting holes, making protection cages
and pruning trees that shaded the planting area.
Jenny
& Lizzy Cooper again spent their spring vacation grafting American
chestnuts.
FOR
INTERNET RESOURCES:Scroll down to the end of the 2005 or 2004 newsletter.
We
are a very small, nonprofit foundation, capable of doing a very big job for
American chestnut restoration because our scientists and officers are all
dedicated volunteers and the Foundation neither owns nor rents property.
Thus, we can make progress with a small budget, because funds are needed only
to support the research, to pay for student assistance in the laboratory and
field, for plot maintenance and supplies, and for correspondence and mailing seednuts to you, our cooperating growers. The
thousands of ACCF American chestnuts growing in research plots on public lands
and on your lands, and you, our cooperating growers, are the most important
assets of our Foundation. Our rewards are in knowledge reaped from scientific
research and field experience and shared with the public. We thank you
for joining in and supporting our work and look forward to counting many more
of your reports among this year's rewards.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille
Griffin, Executive Director
Other
ACCF Directors:
Gary
Griffin, President, Professor of Forest Pathology, Virginia Tech
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president, Superintendent, Clements State Tree Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Research Chemist, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry,
Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical Engineer,
Cookeville, TN
Dedicated to the restoration of American
chestnuts
American Chestnut
Cooperator's Foundation
2005 Newsletter
The 2005 Seedling Cost is $40 per 50 or fewer year-old,
bare-root American chestnut seedlings mailed to growers east of the
Mississippi. For western growers, the cost is $50 per 50 seedlings, to cover
the additional mailing cost. Seedling orders need to be submitted on a
Cooperating Grower Agreement form (inside leaf), unless we already have one
here on file for you. Make the check out to ACCF, and please remember to
include your annual donation if you have not already sent it in. Early ordering
is strongly advised; we ran out of seedlings in the beginning of November in
2004.
Everyone who has a Grower Agreement on file with
us and has sent in a donation this year may request up to 15 American
chestnut seeds. But you will need to get your request in early, also: all
chestnut seeds which have not been requested by October 15,
will be shipped to the nursery to make next year's seedlings. We have
discontinued the practice of sending out larger seed lots to individuals or
groups. The work of processing, extracting them from their burs and then the
hot water treatment, 120 F for 20 minutes, is very time-consuming, and we do
not have the capacity to store large numbers of chestnut seed.
From the 2004 Virginia harvest we sent 4,716
nuts to cooperating growers and the
nursery in West Virginia, and the nursery distributed 5544 American chestnut
seedlings to our cooperating growers.
The only way to get more than 15 American
chestnuts is to help out at harvest and take up to 100 nuts home with you, in
their burs, and process them yourself. We need volunteer help at chestnut harvest, usually beginning in the third week of September, to cut
out the burs on the trees ready to be harvested and put burs into dog food bags
marked by mother tree. The seed orchards are in Blacksburg and Giles County. I
usually leave home around 9 and work till noon or until the work for that day
is done. Some days there may be only one tree to harvest, other days, many. The
burs are cut with an extension pole pruner usually 12 feet long; you hold it
overhead, stretching to reach the burs and bracing against the rope pull that
works the blade. It is hard work, for strong, younger persons. To pitch in at
harvest, e-mail Lucille at accf@direcway.com for a date and directions.
We store the burs in the basement about a week, until many are cracking open,
then extract nuts from the burs, wearing heavy leather gloves, working outside
on a picnic table, usually afternoons, beginning in the end of September. This
is a repetitive job that wears out your hands and grip. We would be grateful
for help with this, also.
Voles are determined miners of American chestnuts, eating the
nuts before they sprout and eating the roots when they grow below the
protection of the tree shelter. Direct-seeding chestnuts is
wasted effort in the face of large vole populations and nursery plantings may
be possible only with special precautions. The bed should be prepared by
digging a trench one foot deep and lining the bottom and sides with
quarter-inch grid hardware cloth before replacing the soil and planting. The
hardware cloth should extend several inches above ground where it is joined by
a ch chicken-wire fence. Poison baits to be placed in
PVC pipes or tire halves can be obtained at feed stores, but they require daily
monitoring to remove the dead voles.
The Asian ambrosia beetle is a
tiny pest which has been found throughout the southeast, from Texas to coastal
Maryland. To reproduce, the female bores pinholes into the sapwood of young,
thin-barked hardwoods. The beetle damage is most serious when it begins in
early March and April, and it continues at lower levels until fall. While many
other tree species may survive, an attack by ambrosia beetles can be a death
sentence for American chestnut because the blight fungus may enter through the
many tiny holes.
Defend against this pest by examining the lower
trunk and branches of chestnuts smaller than 3 inches in diameter at breast
height: look for the telltale pinholes; sometimes a tiny column of sawdust is
protruding from the hole. Check once a week at least, beginning in March and
throughout the season. If any pinholes are found, treat the entire bark surface
weekly with a spray containing permethrin. Prune out
heavily infested stems and burn them. Stems with strong root systems can sprout
back if you cut the stem near ground level and cover the wound with soil.
Here in the Virginia mountains, this is the first year
we have found ambrosia beetle damage. Because so much is at stake in the four
research plots involved, we have been spraying all the chestnut stems 3 inches
in diameter and smaller in these plots. The beetles had been at work for two
months before we discovered them, so we may lose at least six large grafts. We
hope, through vigilance and prompt treatment, that you may be able to avoid
similar losses.
This Grower's Report covers twelve
separate American chestnut research plots: eleven are in three Virginia
counties and one is in West Virginia. Half are in yard or orchard settings and
half are in the forest. I have been planting American chestnuts since 1985.
This year I counted 331 survivors, of which 131 are F2
seedlings (second generation all-Americans). My tallest is Pacman,
at about 35 feet, and three of my seedlings are bearing nuts. Seedling losses
this year I attribute, in order of importance, to poor germination, hungry
voles, blight, Phytophthora, and other
unidentified varmints.
As of MAY 8, we have received 141 reports from growers, for a total of 6639 ACCF chestnuts
reported.
This Grafter's Report covers eight
grafting plots in Virginia, all of which contain seedling plantings, also. Four
plots are in the National Forest. For 2005, I have only 15 new grafts
surviving. From all the years since 1990, I have 111 surviving grafts of which
26 are bearing nuts. Thirty-eight are F2 grafts, and three of these are
bearing. As always, graft failure is the biggest problem, followed by premature
blight infection, undermining of the root systems by a root rot or voles, and
now also, the ambrosia beetle.
We look forward to reading your grafting
reports, and as they are received, they
will be posted in the on-line newsletter here:
Carl Mayfield reports 41 surviving ACCF grafts. Harold Pierce beginning
this year grafting into chinquapin has 4 grafts.
Nathan Pease is the occasional subject of inquiry. Ed Greenwell named
his Pease seedling, Nathan when it showed precocious blight resistance. You may
remember that we began the blight-resistance trial on a Nathan nutgraft in May 2004, by inoculating the lowest branch in
two places with a killing strain of the blight fungus. This May the results
were disappointing: the level of blight resistance recorded in the one-year
test is very low and would be insufficient for inclusion in our breeding
program. However, there is the second, long-term test: this spring we
inoculated a blight canker on Nathan's trunk with hypovirulent
strains of the blight fungus. A few of our American chestnuts, which did not
test well at first, have since shown impressive long-term resistance (10 years
+).
Breeding: We have just over a hundred control bags up in six
different mother trees. All of this year's intercrosses are first generation
all-Americans, to increase the numbers that may be available for future testing
in several new lines which we started in previous years. Although the mother
trees have demonstrated very impressive long-term blight resistance, we have
learned from past resistance trials that blight resistance of the parent trees
does not regularly combine. Equal or better blight resistance may be expected
to show up in about 10% of the progeny. This is one reason why breeding for
blight resistance takes so much time.
Another reason is premature infection with the
blight fungus. The one-year resistance test requires trunks blight free and at
least 1.5 inches in diameter at breast height. Before they reach this size,
many American chestnuts have blight on the main stem. This is the case with our
large, bearing F2 grafts. We inoculated their cankers with hypovirulence and will have to watch them over 10 years,
instead of being able to make selections for the next generation following a
one-year test. Thus, we did not put bags on the F2 flowers.
We thank the National Wild
Turkey Federation for continuing support
of our cooperative research with the Virginia Department of Forestry, USDA-Forest
Service and Virginia Tech, establishing and maintaining forest plots
of ACCF all-American chestnuts.
The Pandapas plot
has 96 prepared planting holes, with staked 5-foot weldwire
cages and tree mats for weed control. From the 2003 planting, 7 (Th x J) and 7 volunteers (for grafting) have survived. Last
winter, we direct-seeded nuts to fill all the empty spaces for a total of 96
and planted four to six daffodils around each cage in an attempt to create an
area unappetizing to voles. We also made a small nursery planting with 30 extra
from this seed lot in a cold frame in our yard, for a backup system, in case of
poor germination or theft. Only 31 of the direct-seeded chestnuts germinated
and all 30 in the backup nursery were stolen by voles. The tallest new seedling
is 21 inches. We are contemplating strategies for planting the 51 empty spaces
this winter.
At Turkey Run 15 grafts survive. Two each
were killed this past spring by blight and ambrosia beetle. The few new grafts
made failed, so we concentrated efforts to cut back the competing tree species
and bring more sunlight on the grafts and other chestnuts which may be grafted
in a year or two, when they are growing more vigorously. We
direct-seeded seven (Ruth x Miles) to fill the empty places in the small
planting area where three chestnuts from previous plantings survive.
Here we had excellent germination, but one by one, at six to eight inches tall,
the five planted in the bottom row died, their roots trimmed off by voles.
In the Lesesne
State Forest, Nelson County, we planted in holes where nuts or seedlings
had previously failed 59 open-pollinated nuts and 12 volunteer seedlings. None
of the nuts germinated in the two sections in which we have a Phytophthora problem, while seven of the small
volunteer seedlings survive there, but with insignificant incremental growth.
We continue to treat with SubdueMax fungicide drench,
spring and fall, most of the lower half of this 3.5 acre plot and also tried a
chicken manure treatment in the spring.
In the 2003 planting section, most of the open
pollinated nuts germinated and 9 have survived. Nearly all of the controlled
pollinated nuts germinated, also: we have 27 (NCC x J), 26 (VT2 x G4) and 12 Pacman. Total survivors in this planting, including 6 F1
back-crosses to the Floyd parent, are 80. Many of the new seedlings were at or
over 20 inches tall when checked on August 9, and the tallest 2-year-old is 4.5
feet.
In the 2002 planting, 88 of the original F2 seedlings
survive, along with 5 F2 grafts and 5 volunteers for future grafting. The tallest
seedling is 12 feet. Most of the losses in this planting have been to Phytophthora.
The western third of the Lesesne
plot contains the big 1980 grafts and many root systems from the original Dietz
planting in 1969, some of which may receive grafts in the future. We have nine
new grafts in this area, along with 12 others made since 2000. Three of the
older grafts and one from this spring have died apparently from root rot, along
with two small seedlings. Ten seedlings survive, although the tallest has
yellowing leaves which might be an early sign of stress from root rot. In
addition to the fungicide drench, we spray yellowing leaves with magnesium
sulfate and amend the soil inside the cage with compost, in case the problem
may be nutritional.
We have gone into detail, to give the newcomers among an idea of some growing
problems in forest settings, as well as any planting place without very good
drainage.
Outstanding Cooperators:
John B. Bushmann, Ken
James, Karl Mayfield, and Violet Pesinkowski are long-term, outstanding supporters of and contributors
to American chestnut research.
Charlie Elgin and another gentleman, whose name I have misplaced, helped with the
2004 chestnut harvest. We hope to recognize the unidentified gentleman here
next year.
Jenny & Lizzy
Cooper cut trees in the Turkey Run plot
and grafted, spending their spring vacation helping the American chestnut
cause.
INTERNET RESOURCES: Ed's Web page showing Nathan's progress
http://www.accf-online.org/nathanblight.htm
The Tennessee ACCF site, also by Ed: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/1436/
ACCF Links page, by Ed, featuring a March 2003, photo of Jenny Cooper
grafting in Craigs Creek research plot:
http://www.accf-online.org/links.html
We are working for American chestnut restoration
with the hope of making a small contribution which might be multiplied many
times throughout the natural range and through the generations to improve our
forests. This is often hard work and also demands a stubborn, long-term commitment,
keen observation skills and a thoughtful, rapid response in problem-solving. It
teaches the habit of keeping notes and is a great introduction to scientific
study. With our work product constantly exposed to the forces of nature, we
learn to develop patience in adversity and humility in success. Our spirits are
uplifted by each small advance, and we give thanks. These are the values which
made our country great. You cannot go wrong by involving the whole family,
children and grandchildren in American chestnut restoration.
Respectfully submitted,
Lucille Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF Directors
Gary Griffin, President, Professor of Forest
Pathology, Virginia Tech
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president, Superintendent,
Clements State Tree Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins, Secretary, Research Chemist,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Concord College, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, Financial Advisor,
Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of Tennessee chestnut
projects, Electrical Engineer, Cookeville, TN
Dedicated
to the restoration of American chestnuts
American
Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation
2004
Newsletter
Dear Friends and Cooperating
Growers:
STRONG HELP WANTED
AT HARVEST to wield 12 and 20 foot
extension-pole pruners and cut the burs out of seednut
mother trees. We will need help on September 18,
20-24, 27-30 and October 1. Meet at Forest Service Rd708, Newport, VA at
9 a.m; e-mail accf@direcway.com for
directions.
ACCF BREEDING
In our quest for
all-American chestnuts with high blight resistance, we start from original
blight survivors with low levels of blight resistance. By selecting the best
blight-resistant individuals through successive generations of breeding, we aim
to concentrate their blight resistance, to obtain the high level which is
required for long-term survival within the American chestnut's natural range.
This is a classic breeding method. It has been widely successful,
creating many disease-resistant crops.
With trees, it just
takes longer. A generation for American chestnuts is 8 to 10 years from
controlled pollination to blight-resistance testing. We have three breeding
lines in their second generation; of these only (Ruth x Miles) may begin
testing within a year or two. Other 2004 controlled all-American
intercrosses include (G4 x Fl), (BigM
x G4), (Fl x JEB), (Th x
JEB), (RgMt x JEB), (NCC x JEB), (MtL
x JEB), (MtL x Am), (Lo x Am) and (Lo x JEB).
But what about the
seedlings and seednuts from open pollination which
you, our cooperating growers, are raising? Thousands of these, planted
within the natural range, are being field-tested by the ever-present blight.
Most may have some genes in common with our controlled intercrosses, as well as
genes from dozens of other blight-resistant American chestnuts. The best
blight-resistant individuals to turn up among them are to be our source of
diversity for the blight resistant American chestnut population. Gary and John
plan to visit your plantations as they mature to evaluate these American
chestnuts. We rely upon your reports to help identify the best American
chestnuts from our distributions. Pollen and scions from the very best among
them will add the finishing touch to each ACCF breeding line.
COOPERATOR'S
AGREEMENT
We request all
cooperating growers to sign, date and fill out the enclosed Cooperating
Grower's Agreement form, in pledge of your commitment to our breeding program.
An additional document (posted on our Web site) will be required for orders of
100 or more seedlings or requests for larger than the usual (15) seednut allotment.
LOWER SEEDLING
COST
The 2004 nursery cost
for seedlings is $35 per 50 or fewer year-old, bare-root American chestnut
seedlings. This includes Priority mailing, where necessary, to most addresses East of the Mississippi. Growers West
of the Mississippi need to add $10 per 50 American chestnuts to cover a higher
shipping cost. Orders must be received on a Cooperating Grower's Agreement
form. We strongly advise those who cannot plant seedlings in winter to request seednuts instead.
The nursery
distribution schedule depends upon the weather. American chestnuts must
be fully dormant before lifting. Also, the machinery cannot operate on very wet
terrain. Thus, the date when seedlings may be mailed is unknown until the
last minute, and we are unable to promise delivery for a specific date. In
general, the chestnuts are lifted in the second half of November, processed and
packed on a Saturday for mailing the following Monday. All growers should
start now to prepare the holes and erect protection cages. The ability to
plant seedlings soon after they arrive correlates strongly with high transplant
success.
PROTECTION CAGES are necessary to save your young American chestnuts from
deer and rabbit depredations. We prefer to make our cages from 2 x 4 inch grid,
4- and 5-foot tall weldwire (sometimes called dogwire). You can cut 7 cages from a 50 foot roll.
When constructing cages, it is best to bend only 3 wires, with the middle wire
bent in the opposite direction to the wires at the top and bottom. This way,
cages can be easily moved, as needed. We use five-foot cages to protect the
leader of shorter seedlings and grafts; we change to 4-foot cages once the
leader is 7 feet tall. The strongest stakes for cages are 4-foot rebar, but
half-inch conduit is lighter-weight for carrying into plots and also cheaper.
Running deer may crash into cages, destroying them, if they are not decorated
with bright flagging.
GROWERS' REPORTS
From nuts and
seedlings I have planted over the past 20 years, I count 258 surviving American
chestnuts. Only 6 of these are big enough to take care of themselves. The rest
require regular attention through the growing season to keep them in full sun
and free from the competition of other plants, to minimize insect damage, and
nip all other problems at the bud. My experience with setbacks, natural and
unnatural disasters is the source for most of our recommendations to growers.
Thus, I read your reports with sympathy, I appreciate your efforts (often in
spite of the evidence), and I always hope to be able to help.
As of 12/12/05, we
have received 168 reports of 5,455 surviving ACCF chestnuts. If yours is not
among these, please send your report via our Web site or on the reverse side of
your Cooperating Grower's Agreement form. Your numbers will be added the tally above.
Last winter, we sent out 2,737 seednuts and 8,595
seedlings to cooperating growers.
GRAFTING REPORT
I have 36 new grafts,
representing 30% success overall for 2004, but as usual, the results varied
greatly among the different plots. Many losses at the Airport and Scion
Bank were caused by tiny ants colonizing the new grafts inside their shelters
and eating the buds. This might be avoided in the future by sprinkling Diazinon on the soil surrounding each graft. Most other
losses I attribute to bad luck in timing the graft: on certain dates nearly
everything grew, while during one whole week everything failed. Thus, some
plots had success higher than 60%, while others obtained less than 20%. I have
altogether 117 surviving grafts and Carl Mayfield has 92. We look forward to
your grafting reports and observations.
BLIGHT RESISTANCE
TESTING begins in May, when blight-free
American chestnuts that are 1.5 inches in diameter at breast height can be
inoculated with a known killing strain of the blight fungus. Then, the
following May we measure the size and depth of the blight canker and compare it
against the standard developed by Gary Griffin. About a dozen (Miles x Ruth) F2
grafts were large enough this year; but unfortunately, well before May, none
were blight-free. Keen to begin testing something, I chose Ed Greenwell's
Nathan Pease nutgraft, although it was only one inch dbh. We are looking forward to May 2005 results.
NWTF GRANT
Many thanks to the National
Wild Turkey Federation for very generous support of our project, in
cooperation with the Virginia Department of Forestry, USDA-Forest
Service and Virginia Tech, to establish and test in forest plots
ACCF all-American chestnuts.
Last winter, the
Blacksburg Ranger District cleared the area in the Jefferson National Forest
which they had cut for the Pandapas plot to test a
first generation intercross (Th x J). We have marked
10 rows with 10 foot spacing down the mountainside in this east-facing cove. We
prepare each hole thus: cut and pull roots, dig 18 inch hole, mix a tablespoon
of Diazinon in the fill and replace it, push an 8 to
10 inch cylinder 2 to 3 inches down in the center of the planting place,
install a tree mat (Forestry Suppliers, Inc.) and a staked, 5 -foot tall
protection cage, hung with pink flagging to keep deer from crashing into cages.
Our yield from 2003 controlled pollinations was so disappointing, we only had
12 nuts to plant (in the cylinders) here last winter. Seven have survived, and
we planted an additional row of volunteer seedlings, of which 8 survive. These
volunteers are from American chestnuts that are not blight resistant; we will
use them for grafting stock to include the parent trees in the same plot with
their progeny, for test purposes. This past June and July, hoping for enough
seed to fill out plantings this winter, we pollinated each flower 3 times at 5
day intervals, instead of the usual two times.
In the Lesesne State Forest, Nelson County, in the
area newly cleared by the VDF, we planted two and a half long rows by direct-seeding
as above, with several different controlled intercrosses, F2 and F1. This new
planting has 28(VT2 x G4), 21(NCC x J), 2(F x G4), 5(Ruth x F) and 2 Pacman. Also surviving in the other parts of this plot from
past years' planting are 102(Miles x Ruth) and 12 additional F1 intercrosses.
From past years' grafts 16 survive, along with 16 new grafts, mostly F2 but
also some parent trees. In May, we inoculated blight cankers on seven of the F2
grafts with hypovirulence. In June, Gary applied
Subdue fungicide drench in two areas where seedlings or grafts have died from a
root rot. We cannot increase the Lesesne plantings
until the Phytophthora or other root-rot pathogen is
under control.
At Turkey Run
we have 24 F2 grafts and 3 F2 seedlings. We have inoculated the first blight
cankers on six of these grafts. Altogether, we now have 18 (Miles x Ruth) F2
grafts under integrated management: blight-resistant all-Americans on ideal
sites managed for American chestnut, with their first blight cankers inoculated
with select hypovirulent strains of the blight
fungus. Our largest F2 graft (20 ft) is at the Airport; it made 2 female
flowers which we pollinated with JEB.
2004 OUTSTANDING
COOPERATOR
Wayne Bowman of the Virginia Department of Forestry and Ed Leonard,
Silviculturist of the George Washington and Jefferson
National Forest, for invaluable cooperation and assistance in research plots.
Jenny,
Lizzy & Lise Cooper, and Vicky Lewis for harvesting most of our 2003 seednuts. They held
the pruning poles last fall.
John
Buschmann, for
contributions too numerous to cite toward ACCF progress in the research at the Lesesne State Forest, and Frieda for pitching in
with the dirty work.
Ken James, no relation to Jesse, for his work at Chestnut Hill. In
July, Gary and I visited Ken to look over his American chestnut restoration
project. He has 38 surviving grafts and 271 seedlings growing on ideal, rich
chestnut land in the severe upstate NY climate. This is a great test site. To
create his chestnut plots, he cut the big timber himself. In addition to ACCF
stock, his collection includes some good-looking native NY chestnuts.
Considering the quality and scope of Ken's work at Chestnut Hill, we are
amazed.
Carl
Mayfield, for regular generous support of ACCF research, outstanding grafting
and an extensive, well-documented American chestnut restoration project.
Violet Pesinkowski, for
regular, very generous support of ACCF research.
Douglas
Buege, for volunteer labor in ACCF research
plots, carrying bales of weldwire, preparing terrain,
cutting trees and weeds.
By taking on the job
of restoring American chestnuts in the forests, we accept a huge environmental
challenge. This year, we are pleased to welcome many new cooperating growers
from the National Wild Turkey Federation. We need as many hands as possible to
make the long-term commitment and share the hard work. Cutting trees, weeding,
digging planting holes, constructing cages, driving stakes, planting or
grafting, you may be tired, dirty and sweating, but nevertheless very happy to
look upon your work and give thanks that you are still able to do this work.
The possibility of an American chestnut grove is worth it.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille Griffin,
Executive Director
Other ACCF
Directors
Gary Griffin,
President, Professor of Forest Pathology, Virginia Tech
Dave McCurdy,
Vice-president, Superintendent, Clements State
Tree Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins,
Secretary, Research Chemist, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Concord College,
WV
William Pilkington,
Treasurer, Financial Advisor, Ghent, WV
Ed Greenwell,
Director of Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical Engineer, Cookeville, TN
Dedicated to the
restoration of American chestnuts
American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation
2003 Newsletter
Dear Friends and Cooperating Growers:
NEW SEEDLING PRICE
We are late figuring the seedling cost this year
because we lost money on last year's distribution. Also, we have learned that
most seedlings sent outside West Virginia are in the mails for as long as 2
weeks, even those going across the river to Ohio. Seedlings now cost $40 per bundle of 50; for bundles of 25 or fewer, the
cost is $23.
We highly recommend that all growers who do not
plan to pick up their seedlings (see below, Open House) and do not live in West
Virginia consider requesting Priority mailing. Priority costs an additional
$10 per bundle. When you write your check payable to ACCF, please remember
to add your contribution for 2003 ($20) to the research that supports these
distributions.
The nursery has designated only 4,500 seedlings
for ACCF growers this year, so it is best to send your orders in early.
OPEN HOUSE
1. The West Virginia Forest Tree Nursery where they harvest the nuts and then grow the American
chestnut seedlings which we have been distributing since 1989,
will hold an open house for ACCF growers on Saturday, December 6, from
10 to 12 a.m.
The nursery is located about 10 miles north of
Point Pleasant, WV, in Lakin, near the Ohio River, on
Route 62.
Please note in your order, if you plan to pick up
your seedlings at that time. We can send you a list of motels within a 10
mile radius of the nursery upon request.
Come and meet Dave McCurdy, John Elkins, and
(weather permitting) Ed Greenwell, ask questions and discuss your growing
problems and solutions.
2. The Airport Research Plot near Virginia Tech in Blacksburg is the place where we hold spring grafting
lessons; there we are making another demonstration of integrated management for
chestnut blight control. We also have about 2 dozen tiny volunteer chestnut
seedlings which may be dug up and taken home. Lucille can meet you at 10 a.m.
on November 8. Please request directions to avoid being late to this
open house. Security requires locking the gate after entering.
PHYTOPHTHORA
The first symptom of a Phytophthora
infection is premature yellowing leaves, followed by browning leaves and then
death of the stem. When the seedling is dug up, a brownish-black
decay is evident on the fine roots and the structural roots. Unlike chestnut
blight, Phytophthora offers no second chance because
it kills the roots as well as the top.
The ultimate defense is to plant in sandy,
well-drained soils, avoid low-lying and flat land (unless the soil is sandy),
and also, avoid old fields in the Piedmont. In cases where the soils are
ordinarily well-drained but are heavy in texture, unusually wet conditions can
slow the drainage to create a Phytophthora
problem.
If the disease is diagnosed in its early stages,
it can be controlled with a fungicide drench (Ridomil
or Subdue) applied following the manufacturer's directions. This is an
expensive and labor-intensive solution which we recommend only where the
planting site is ordinarily well-drained but held water longer than usual
because of extremely heavy and frequent rains.
If you have a Phytophthora
problem: put the dead seedlings directly into garbage bags and send them to the
landfill; seed the planting holes with grass to contain spread of the pathogen,
and do not replant American chestnuts there, or nearby downhill from the Phytophthora-infested area.
VOLES
They make tunnels in field and forest, feeding on
insect grubs, worms and roots, and like many other creatures they fancy
American chestnuts.
With no voles in the neighborhood, you can protect
direct-seeded chestnuts with a tree shelter about 10 inches tall, driven two
inches into the soil and staked in place. The nut is planted no more than an
inch down and covered with peat moss, and the shelter is surrounded by a 5 foot
tall weldwire cage to protect against raccoon, rabbit
and deer.
Voles simply undermine this defense and eat the
chestnut root as it emerges below the shelter barrier. The control recommended
for commercial orchards presumes an ability to visit the plot daily; if you may
be able to do this, then contact your County Agent for
help. Other possible courses of action include planting daffodil bulbs (which
are poison) in a wide circle around each chestnut and/or mixing ground glass
around and below each chestnut. More vole control suggestions are most welcome.
NWTF GRANT
This year a National Wild Turkey Federation
grant of $5,000 continues support for planting second generation all-Americans
(F2s) and making grafts of them to test their blight resistance and
to establish two seed orchards on public lands.
For part of this project, we cooperate with the Virginia
Department of Forestry in the Lesesne State
Forest. In February, they cleared an additional acre or so to make more space
for planting & grafting. This past November and March, in last year's
planting rows, we filled the empty places by direct-seeding. This September, I
counted 112 F2 seedlings there, (Miles x Ruth) and (Ruth x Miles).
Although three of the seedlings are 6 foot tall and three are 5 foot tall, the
majority grew very little this year because of intense weed competition (over 8
feet tall) and a non-lethal virus infection on the leaves.
The grafts of these F2s in several
sites number 54, but they represent only 40 individuals, and of these it
appears that only 5 may be large enough to begin blight resistance testing in
May 2004, while the others will need at least one more growing season to reach
the required diameter of 1.5 inches at breast height.
The test for blight resistance includes
inoculation with a killing strain of the blight fungus, after which the canker
growth is measured over a 2-year period.
Our new seed orchards are under development in
cooperation with the USDA-FS, Blacksburg Ranger District. The Craigs Creek project now has 22 grafts and 5 seedlings, all
from the same controlled pollination (above). While 7 of them are over 12 ft
tall, we did not plan to use these grafts for resistance testing, but instead,
to put them under integrated management as soon as they are naturally infected
by blight.
The final step in integrated management involves
regularly checking for blight and inoculating the first blight cankers (on
resistant individuals) with hypovirulent strains of
the blight fungus selected from the research cultures at Virginia Tech.
In May, we inoculated with hypovirulent strains the
first three F2 grafts to be infected with blight, in 2 other test
plots.
In our Poverty Creek project, the Forest Service
has cut less than an acre in a mesic, east-facing
cove site where we shall begin direct-seeding this November to establish a new
breeding line with different parent trees.
LARGE SURVIVORS
Recently there has been a great deal of public
interest in searching for additional American chestnuts which appear to have survived
the blight and therefore might be useful to programs breeding for blight
resistance.
While this is a worthy project, our limited
personnel and resources are fully employed and often working overtime. We
cannot take time off to check out a discovery unless the American chestnut is
growing in heavy blight territory, not on the periphery of the natural range,
in a forest setting, at an altitude over 3,000 feet, and it is over 10 inches
in diameter at breast height with visible blight, but no serious crown damage.
No doubt there are numerous survivors which miss
the above description by only one or a few criteria and are therefore well
worth the effort of saving the genes for future testing and breeding. This
could be done best by nutgrafting. Those interested
will find a detailed description of how to make nut grafts in Ed Greenwell's
paper at: http://www.accf-online.org/chestnut/nutgrafting.htm
GRAFTING REPORT
This was a mediocre year for me. I have just 25
new grafts, including two that were made by Jenny Cooper. Overall a
total of 125 of my grafts survive on 9 different sites. Carl Mayfield
reports a total of 50 ACCF nutgrafts, which includes
30 new nutgrafts this year.
Burnie & Essie Burnworth attended April grafting lessons and have reported 4 of their
grafts at Stronghold, MD, are growing well.
Grafting invitation: learn chestnut-grafting
techniques at Virginia Tech in April of 2004, by appointment on a morning of
your choice. This invitation is open to all growers who send an
additional donation to support ACCF research. Please respond in February, suggest two dates (from which I could
choose one) and indicate how many grafts you plan to attempt, so that we may
have enough scionwood to share with you.
GROWERS REPORT
If you followed our recommendation to plant on
well-drained sites, 2003 was a great growing year throughout the East.
I have counted 191 survivors, and my tallest from
a 2002 nut direct-seeded is 2 feet! A few of my 2- and 3-year-olds have
doubled their height. While our Western growers hauled water, we pulled weeds
and cut competing trees. American chestnut seedlings hardly ever succeed
without a good deal of work.
Ed's Nathan Pease American chestnut is still looking good, but my graft of
it will not be large enough to begin its blight-resistance test until 2005.
Thanks very much for reporting! We have so far received reports from 114 growers of
4,166 ACCF chestnuts surviving in 2003. Sometimes I wonder if everyone
understands that total of ACCF seedlings surviving means
the grand total for all years plantings. We accept additions and corrections.
Late reports will be added to the above numbers as they are received.
This past year we sent 7,627 seedlings and
6,917 seednuts to cooperating growers in 37 states
and Ontario.
SEEDNUTS
We are expecting a smaller crop of seednuts here in Virginia because of the very heavy and
frequent rains during pollination time. Each grower may request 15 nuts,
but we will probably run out of seed earlier than we did last winter (January
21).
I did not put many control bags in the Miles and
Ruth grafts, thus many more of their open pollinated nuts may go out to our
most reliable, reporting growers.
Looking out our dining room window, I saw female flowers
in our Pie chestnut's crown. In between rains, I tossed into its
upper branches the catkins leftover from this year's controlled crosses. These
father trees may give this year's Pie nuts many more interesting possibilities,
so they also will go only to our growers who have reported.
HARRY HOTINE SCHOLARSHIP
We have awarded the graduate student, Eric
Hogan, a research scholarship in memory of my father, a self-educated man
who knew and loved the trees, all the Latin as well as common names, and was a
great believer in education and hard work. With this scholarship we
recognize Eric's contribution to American chestnut research through long hours
of careful work in the laboratory.
OUTSTANDING COOPERATORS
Many thanks again to John Buschmann,
John Buschmann, Jr,
and the Jones Family for pitching in and supporting our work in the Lesesne State Forest.
Once again, Violet Pesinkowski
(NY) and Carl Mayfield (VA) have been extremely generous in support of
the graduate student research at Virginia Tech.
Mark Depoy, Mammoth Cave National Park, (KY) was responsible for planting 2,000 additional ACCF seedlings in our
National Parks.
Thanks to Jason Kramer
for engaging Biology and Botany students at Yough
High School in a large project, raising American chestnuts from seed, planting
them on Pennsylvania State Game Land and sending us an A+ report.
Thanks to John Knouse,
who once again sponsored and manned an ACCF booth at an environmental fair in
Athens, Ohio, we have many additional Ohio growers. And Laurie Spangler
set up an ACCF exhibit at the Mill Mountain Zoo near Roanoke, VA.
Ken James
(NY) continues his efforts to maintain and expand the largest American chestnut
forest revival project outside Virginia.
Charles Lytton, (VA) Giles County 4-H Leader, continues work with area
school children, organizing help for harvest at the Martin American Chestnut
Planting, as well as spring field trips to area chestnut-growing projects
involving the children in planting, maintenance and reporting; he also
distributes seednuts to school growing projects.
We now have over 1,000 on the mailing list and
look forward to news about all those American chestnuts.
Respectfully
submitted,
Lucille Griffin, Executive Director
Other ACCF
Directors
Gary Griffin, President,
Virginia Tech Forest Pathology
Dave McCurdy, Vice-president,
Superintendent, Clements State Tree Nursery, WV
John Rush Elkins, Secretary,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Concord College, Research Chemist, Beckley, WV
William Pilkington, Treasurer, ChFC, Cool Ridge, WV
Ed Greenwell, Director of
Tennessee chestnut projects, Electrical Engineer, Cookeville, TN
Dedicated to the
restoration of American chestnuts
American Chestnut
Cooperators' Foundation
excerpt from the 2002 Newsletter
FOUNDING FATHERS
Since the majority of you are new members, let us
introduce two deceased founding fathers, Al Dietz and Bruce Given,
West Virginians whose dedication to American Chestnut
restoration made possible the Lesesne project and our
breeding program for blight resistance. Al was an industrial chemist; Bruce
worked for the West Virginia Division of Forestry. Well before the ACCF was
founded, they were collecting American chestnuts, together and for separate
projects.
Al took large quantities of American chestnut seed
to be irradiated, with the hope of inducing mutations favorable to blight
resistance. He made plantations of these seedlings in cooperation with
landowners throughout the East. The Lesesne is his
largest plantation; the Virginia Tech airport plot is among his smallest.
Stronghold, Inc. in Maryland, a new 2002 ACCF member, is also a legacy of Al Dietz.
We were able to test very few of his trees (all at the Virginia Tech airport,
but just a small number at the Lesesne) for blight
resistance and found only a few at the Lesesne with
low levels of blight resistance.
Al also discovered the Gault
chestnut in Ohio, a grandparent on both sides of our F2 cross, Miles x Ruth,
with the best chance right now to breed true for blight resistance.
Bruce Given was most interested in finding
American chestnuts with possible blight resistance and grafting them into Chinese
chestnut stocks to make all-American chestnut breeding possible and to assemble
an American chestnut collection at a West Virginia tree nursery. Because
of his nursery collections, we can distribute American chestnut seedlings at
cost to our members. Bruce spent years refining bark grafting techniques,
especially for American chestnut replication; his work made our all-American
chestnut breeding program possible.
Bruce grafted the blight-resistant chestnuts
(1980) in the Lesesne, into the stocks of some of
Al's trees which were blight-susceptible; he make the big chestnut grafts which
have become the first demonstration within the natural range of a high level of
chestnut blight control. Bruce taught John Elkins to graft chestnuts, and
John taught me. We are fortunate to follow in their footsteps.
Dedicated
to the restoration of American chestnuts
Return to the American Chestnut
Cooperators' Foundation home page.