e not
entirely hardy and grow very slowly. This year I set out about 20
American chestnuts from Minnesota grown seed and I hope that we are far
enough from other trees of this variety to escape the blight. Tree
growing is just a hobby and lately there has been very little time for
hobbies.

Chestnut Breeding

Report for 1953

ARTHUR HARMOUNT GRAVES and HANS NIENSTAEDT, _The Connecticut
Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven, Connecticut_

The chief aim of this breeding work, which has been carried on now
without interruption since 1930, is to develop a tall timber type of
chestnut by breeding the American species with the blight resistant but
comparatively low-growing Japanese and Chinese chestnuts, _Castanea
crenata_ and _C. mollissima_, respectively. Practically all trees of our
valuable American chestnut of any appreciable size have now been killed
to the ground by the blight fungus, _Endothia parasitica_. Shoots
arising from the base of the old stumps often live long enough to bear
pollen, and this we have lately been forced to use in our breeding work
with the disadvantage that we can not know definitely the nature of the
genotype of the pollen parent. American pollen from a good phenotype
near Washington, D. C., was kindly furnished us in the early 30's by the
then Office of Forest Pathology of the U.S.D.A., and this stock is now
incorporated with our older Japanese-American and Chinese-American
hybrids.

As indicated in the following pages, we are not neglecting the
nut-bearing potentialities of the chestnut tree.

Weather Conditions in 1953

The disastrous ice storm of the 9th and 10th of January caused slight
damage to some of the Chinese trees. Their numerous, more or less
horizontal branches and characteristically brittle wood make them prone
to damage of this sort; nevertheless, only a few branches were lost.
After a comparatively warm February, the warmest since 1925, March
brought us more rain than for any March in the 81 years records have
been kept[3]--a total of 10.78 inches. This was all to the good, as
later events proved. Because of the preceding warm February the ground
was for the most part unfrozen, so that, instead of running off, the
water was largely absorbed in the soil, and thus added to the water
table. The precipitation of April was again heavy--5.6 inches--the
normal per month for this area being about 3-1/2 inches. After an
unusually good growing season in May, Jun