I am looking for Chestnut seed sources for a couple different types of crosses. If I have to get seedlings, I’m still interested, but I have to be very careful getting bare root because I’m not always in a position to plant large numbers immediately.
American chestnut (dentata) x Chinese chestnut (mollissima) where the mollissima parent is a good nut tree. Also would accept seedlings from a dentata x mollissima cultivar if they come from a good nut quality mollissima pollen cloud. Ideally, the mollissima would be hardy in zone five or colder since the trees will be raised in Wisconsin.
Seeds from a good North Italian Marrone type, perferably sativa rather than sativa x crenata crossed with a cold hardy mollissima parent. I don’t know a lot about the Marrone type and hardiness. What I do know is I have a number of friends who have been to Europe and really like roasted chestnuts from Northern Italy. Again, if there is a good cultivar of this type, I would be interested in seed nuts coming from a mollissima pollen cloud.
I am in Wisconsin. Blight is infrequent here, but I must respect the possibility. I have a couple 50 year old dentata on the property and a number of younger, bearing nut type Castanea trees of various and/or unknown sources. Most of what I am currently planting is Route 9 and Badgersett. I am familiar with cultivar Ace and I believe I have a 2025 source. Any leads on high quality sources for the above trees would be much appreciated.
A possible source might be mountainstatechestnuts.com. They used to sell nuts, no trees. The web site could use an upgrade. The co-owner of this enterprise is a dentist in Davis, West Virginia. Pretty good info on his web site. It may even give you a few more ideas. This fellow was one of the few that I found who had some info available about what he had done and what the results were. I have some trees from his nut source. Nuts went through cold stratification in the refrigerator, put in pots for sprouting, out planted with tree tubes in 2019. One tree has a couple of seed balls (burrs?) this year. They’re still green. Don’t know if they’re filled nuts or not.
Thanks. Grimo has some interesting material, but they don’t ship Chestnuts to the US. Some of those hazels, though, almost ended in my cart. I’ll explore the others.
Updates: I’ve got 103 nuts in deep 4" pots and 25 nuts in smaller four inch pots scattered around the house. Some of the nuts are purchased from Route Nine, but most are from the trees currently on the property. In addition, I have seedlings and grafted trees on order from a couple nurseries.
my Dunstan’s were that size last fall. they’re outside under the snow. i plan to plant them and some butternuts that i also grew out from seed in early May…
