1/15/10 AMERICAN CHESTNUT PROPAGATION

A GORGEOUS DAWN
AMERICAN CHESTNUT
TOUGH TO HANDLE
THE NUT
NUTS STRATIFIED IN DAMP PEAT
NO, JOAN, I'M NOT KEEPING WORMS IN THE REFRIGERATOR AGAIN

Friday, 7:15 AM. 12 degrees, wind WSW, calm. The channel looks frozen, the sky is mostly clear and the barometer predicts partly cloudy skies. The lack of cloud cover allowed it to get relatively cold last night.
Since late fall I have had American chestnut (Castanea dentata) fruit clusters stored in a wicker basket, waiting for the husks to open and the nuts to fall out. Some have, and most of the husks cracked open, so I decided it was time to extricate them all and stratify them in the refrigerator for spring planting. It was a lot tougher job than I anticipated. The husks are spiny, covered with little needles that I found would penetrate even heavy leather gloves, and the little nuts often had to be pried out, even though the husks were split open. I finally harvested about forty, and mixed them with damp peat and put them in the refrigerator. The term “stratify,” in plant production terms, simply means storing seeds in a damp, sterile medium in a cold environment so they will sprout properly in the spring. Most seeds of temperate climate plants actually need to go through the cold period of winter to germinate. However, many nut trees, including American chestnuts, germinate in late fall under leaf litter on the forest floor, but it is difficult to harvest them in this manner, so for production purposes most nut species are collected in the fall and stratified. I will keep an eye on them and when they sprout I will plant them in potting soil in peat pots. Hopefully keeping them cold will delay germination so they don't grow too fast too early. American chestnuts are seldom grown commercially because of the nearly ubiquitous chestnut blight, which almost wiped out the species early in the last century. The trees in and around Bayfield are either geographically isolated from the disease or have a degree of immunity, I don’t know which, but they are beautiful specimens and are worth propagating. Howard Larson, formerly of Bayfield and now of Ashland, has had considerable success propagating them. For more information, contact the American Chestnut Foundation.