PP001 (1/03)

An Historical Reference for Chestnut Introductions
into North America

By Dr. Sandra L. Anagnostakis
Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology
The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station
123 Huntington Street
P. O. Box 1106
New Haven, CT 06504-1106

Telephone: (203) 974-8498 Fax: (203) 974-8502
Email: Sandra.Anagnostakis@po.state.ct.us

When people find chestnut trees of any size growing in the New England woods they frequently call The Experiment Station, hoping that they have found an American chestnut tree resistant to chestnut blight. Usually the tree is Asian, or an Asian hybrid. In previous centuries, chestnut trees were very important to the people on this continent. They took advantage of "new and different" material much more than is generally realized, and were planting Asian species long before chestnut blight was discovered in New York City in 1904 (see Table 1). I have started compiling some information about the history of chestnut importations into North America, to help people better appreciate this valuable resource.

European Chestnut Trees
The first recorded importations were those of Thomas Jefferson, who brought cuttings to his home, Monticello, and grafted them on native American chestnut trees. When Eleuthere Irenee DuPont de Nemours moved from France to Bergen Point, New Jersey in 1799, and then on to Brandywine, Delaware, he brought many European chestnuts (Castanea sativa) with him. He imported more later, hybridized them, and planted them all over the area. By 1889 some of the popular varieties of C. sativa and C. sativa X dentata hybrids were: ‘Anderson’ ‘Bartram’ ‘Comfort’ ‘Cooper’ ‘Corson’ ‘Dager’ ‘Darlington’ ‘duPont’ ‘Miller’ ‘Moncur’ ‘Numbo’ ‘Paragon’ ‘Ridgely’ ‘Scott’ ‘Spanish’ and ‘Styer’.

Japanese Chestnut Trees
In 1876, S. B. Parsons of Flushing, New York, imported lily bulbs through plant collector Thomas Hogg for his garden in Connecticut, and one of the baskets contained, instead, seed of Castanea crenata. He planted the seed, and gave seedlings to all his friends. Two of these are still growing very well in Connecticut; one in Old Lyme on the grounds of the Bee and Thistle Inn, and one in Cheshire behind the Congregational Church. Major importation of Asian chestnut trees began in 1882 when William Parry, of Parry, New Jersey, brought in 1,000 grafted C. crenata trees. Parry selected ‘Parry’ as his best, but sold several other varieties as well.

In 1886, Luther Burbank imported 10,000 nuts from Japan for selecting and hybridizing. In 1893, his "New Creations" catalog advertised his ’New Japan Mammoth’ chestnut, and he sold three seedlings to Judge Andrew J. Coe of Connecticut. These were sold in 1897 to J. H. Hale of South Glastonbury, Connecticut, who named them ‘Coe’, ‘Hale’, and ‘McFarland’, and sold them from his nursery and through catalogs, as early as 1898.

There were 21 varieties of Japanese chestnuts listed in T. H. Powell's 1898 Bulletin (#42, Delaware Agricultural Experiment Station). These were discussed in gardening magazines such as The Rural New Yorker, and advertised in plant and seed catalogs throughout the country. By the turn of the century, Asian and European chestnut trees were available by mail from many nurseries, such as Burbank (California), Parry Bros. (New Jersey), Hale (Connecticut), Kerr (Maryland), Biltmore (North Carolina), Boehmer (Japan), and the Yokohama Co. of New York and Tokyo (Table 1).

Chestnuts were grown as a crop in many places, and some of the eastern U.S. companies in business by 1900 were:

The Albion Chestnut Company, Clementon, NJ
150 acres of stump land grafted with sativa (‘Numbo’) and crenata

J. W. Beecher, Pottsville, PA
80 acres with 18,800 grafted trees

Arthur J. Collins, Moorestown, NJ
30 acres, mostly with grafted ‘Alpha’ crenata, and ‘Paragon’ sativa

Henry W. Comfort, Fallsington, PA
56 trees on one acre, mostly ‘Numbo’

J. T. Lovett, Emilie, PA (near Trenton, NJ)
about 22 acres with 1,200 grafted ‘Paragon’ and 25,000 seedlings

The Mammoth Chestnut Company, Clementon, NJ
about 150 acres, mostly grafted ‘Numbo’

Samuel C. Moon, Morrisville, PA
originator of ‘Numbo’, which was "Magnum Bonum" sativa

Parry Brothers Nursery, Cinnaminson, NJ
many crenata seedlings and selections

Coleman K. Sober, Lewisburg, PA
300 acres, sprouts grafted with ‘Paragon’

Joseph Williams, Riverton, NJ
7,500 dentata seedlings planted, many grafted with crenata and sativa scions

Chinese Chestnut Trees
Chinese chestnuts are not mentioned in the early plant catalogs that I have seen, but plant explorers sent seed to the U.S. in the early 1900's. In 1903, Dr. Charles Sprague Sargent sent C. mollissima seed to The Arnold Arboretum near Boston, Massachusetts, for their collection, but no trees from this seed lot have survived. In 1908, E. H. Wilson sent them seeds of his collection #551, Castanea Henryi from Western Hupeh, China, and one was planted in their collection as tree #6849. This tree survived better than most imports of this species, but finally died in 1934.

Around the turn of the century several plant explorers were traveling around the world collecting plants that could not be found in North America. These people were often careful observers of plant ecology, and their notes make fascinating reading. After the Boxer Rebellion, travel in China again became possible, and several plant collecting expeditions were undertaken. The most famous plant explorers are probably Ernest H. "Chinese" Wilson, who collected for an English Nursery and later for The Arnold Arboretum, Joseph Rock, with backing from The National Geographic Society, and Frank N. Meyer who was hired by David Fairchild to explore for the U.S. Plant Introduction Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These men had very different personal styles, and their travels resulted in vast numbers of importations. I have found only two certain survivors of Frank Meyer's chestnut imports: the Rochester (New York) Parks Department has a specimen of PI 36666 growing in their Durand-Eastman Park as #G 25, and one tree of PI 36666 still grows at the Bartlett Arboretum in Stamford, Connecticut. The latter was named, and propagated for several years as the cultivar 'Bartlett'.'

Chestnut Blight
Chestnut Blight, or Chestnut Bark Disease is caused by the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, formerly called Endothia parasitica. Cankers were found on American chestnut trees lining the avenues of the Bronx Zoo in New York City in 1904. There were reports of the disease on Cape Cod and in Pittsfield (far western), MA, Rochester (north central), NY, Akron (north eastern), Ohio, and south from there. Metcalf and Collins (in 1909) reported no infections south of Virginia. Rapid spread of the disease followed, and within 50 years the fungus was found throughout the native range of C. dentata; from Maine to Georgia, and west to the edge of Michigan.

In 1913, David Fairchild asked Frank Meyer to look for the disease in Asia, and Meyer reported that he had found it in early June. He wrote:

"This blight does not by far do as much damage to the Chinese chestnut trees as to the American ones. Not a single tree could be found which had been killed entirely by this disease, although there might have been such trees which had been removed by the ever active and economic Chinese farmers."

Shear and Stevens grew cultures from Meyer's samples, and in July they inoculated the Chinese fungus into American trees near Washington, DC Rapid death of the sprouts confirmed that this similar-appearing fungus caused chestnut blight.

Meyer went to Japan in 1915, and again found trees with chestnut blight. He wrote that the Japanese chestnut trees were generally more resistant to the blight disease than the Chinese chestnut trees that he had seen, and suggested:

"This Japanese chestnut, Castanea japonica might be used as a factor in hybridization experiments together with American, European, and Chinese species to create immune or nearly immune strains of chestnuts."

Hybridization
Many people took up Meyer's suggestion, and hybrids made earlier to improve the orchard qualities of chestnut trees, were examined for their resistance to chestnut blight.

Arthur H. Graves, of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, started planting chestnut trees and making hybrids in the early 1930's. Trees were planted on his property in Hamden, Connecticut, and on land owned by The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. His work was aided by Hans Nienstaedt and Richard Jaynes, who both did their doctoral research on chestnut at Yale University and The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Now that we can keep American chestnut trees alive with biological control by hypovirulence, breeding can more easily continue.

Species and hybrids of chestnut were distributed by The Experiment Station to home owners all over the Northeastern U.S. Often records of origin are lost, tags are unreadable, or row lines are confused by the planting efforts of squirrels and blue jays. I try to identify the chestnut trees found by citizens, using leaf and twig characteristics. The pure species are relatively easy to identify, but the complicated hybrids must sometimes be a case of "best guess."

My file on chestnut history gets larger every year, as I find yet another catalog or letter from the early days of this century. Many fine Asian trees have withstood 50 to 120 years of New England winters, bugs, and blight. We can use these in present and future breeding programs, as long as we remember to write it down for the people trying to puzzle this out 100 years from now.

Useful References

Trees:

Buckhout, W. A. 1896. Chestnut culture for fruit. Bulletin #36, The Pennsylvania State College Agricultural Experiment Station, State College, PA.

Frothingham, E. H. 1912. Second-growth hardwoods in Connecticut. U.S. Dept. Agric., Forest Service Bulletin #96, Washington, DC

Fuller, A. S. 1896. The Nut Culturist: A treatise on the Propagation, Planting and Cultivation of Nut-bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United States. Orange Judd Co., New York.

Meyer, F. N. 1911. Agricultural explorations in the fruit and nut orchards of China. U.S. Dept. Agric., Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin #204, Washington, DC

Powell, G. H. 1898. The European and Japanese chestnuts in the Eastern United States. Delaware College Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin #42, Newark, DE.

Zon, R. 1904. Chestnut in Southern Maryland. U.S. Dept. Agric., Bureau of Forestry Bulletin #53, Washington, DC

Blight:

Anderson, P. J. and Rankin, W. H. 1914. Endothia canker of chestnut. Cornell Univ. Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin #347, Ithaca, NY.

Fairchild, D. 1913. The discovery of the chestnut bark disease in China. Science 38:279-299.

Merkel, H. W. 1905. A deadly fungus on the American chestnut. NY Zool. Soc., 10th Ann. Rep., NY.

Metcalf, H. and Collins, J. F. 1909. The present status of the chestnut bark disease. U.S.D.A. Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin #141, part 5, pages 45 to 53.

Murrill, W.A. 1908. The spread of the chestnut disease. J. NY Botanical Garden 9:23-30.

Shear, C. L. and Stevens, N. E. 1913. The chestnut-blight parasite (Endothia parasitica) from China. Science 38:295-297.

Shear, C. L. and Stevens, N. E. 1916. The discovery of the chestnut-blight parasite (Endothia parasitica) and other chestnut fungi in Japan. Science 43:173-176.

People:

Cunningham, I. S. 1984. Frank N. Meyer: Plant Hunter in Asia. Iowa State Univ. Press; Ames, IA.

Fairchild, D. 1938. The World Was My Garden. C. Scribner's Sons, NY.

Sutton, S. B. 1970. Charles S. Sargent and the Arnold Arboretum. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA.

Sutton, S. B. 1974. In China's Border Provinces: The Turbulent Career of Joseph Rock, Botanist-Explorer. Hastings Co., NY.

 

Table 1. CHESTNUT TREES BY MAIL-ORDER

Table 2. CHESTNUT SPECIES

SECTION Castanea [three nuts per bur]

SECTION Balanocastanon [one nut per bur]

SECTION Hypocastanon [one nut per bur]

Summary

Foreign chestnut trees were brought into the United States as early as 1773, and all seven species can now be found here. Since we can no longer go back to "the way it was" we can use these other species to improve our chestnut forests and orchards.

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