ied in the sand, so that it is
damp on one side and the sun strikes it on the other side, and the frost
and snow affect it naturally, the nut does just what you want it to do.
It gets out of that uncomfortable condition and begins to grow.
(Laughter.) When planting any nuts, I place them in the sand and leave
one side exposed to light, moisture, frost, and the observation of
visitors. When I have sprouted chinquapins in the north and there is
danger of their not lignifying when the ground begins to freeze, I put a
lot of little sticks upright amongst them, so that my mulch will not
bear too heavily upon the chinquapins, and then cover them with several
inches of oak leaves, or any good, strong leaves that will not pack too
tightly. That mulch of loose leaves will protect the sprouted nuts
perfectly during the winter in Connecticut, so they all start growing in
the next spring.

Another way is to buy chinquapin stocks from any of the nurserymen,
stocks two or three years old, which begin to bear when four or five
years of age.

Professor Close, I think it was, who asked if the nuts were fertile,
both the ones that developed without fertilization by any pollen and the
ones that developed by stereochemic parthenogenesis--by the influence of
neighboring pollen. Both sorts are fertile, and I presume that the
effect of that would be similar to the effect of close inbreeding. In
other words, we would have intensification of characteristics of some
one parent. If you get parthenogenesis through two or three generations
I presume that same peculiar feature of the original parent would become
so intensified as to become a marked feature of the progeny. This offers
a new line of cleavage for horticultural investigation. I am very glad
that you raised that question.

Answering Mr. Littlepage, I have apparently managed to get some crosses
back and forth between chestnuts, and oaks, and beech, this year. I have
a number of those crosses now under way that are apparently good
hybrids.

DR. STABLER: A cross between a chestnut and a beech?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, I think so. You see, I have got to wait a year or so
until the plants develop later characteristics. All of these parent
trees are pretty closely related, you see. The blooming period between
the different ones may be as much as two or three weeks, or three months
apart, in fact. I have cross pollinated hazels and oaks, this year. The
way to do that is to find correspondents at