I see a lot of nursery website selling seedlings but they have the same description as grafted cultivar. Do chestnut seedling produce the same chestnut as a grafted cultivar?
I couldnât open that download on my phone, so Iâve copied & pasted James Naveâs article, below, in the event that others have difficulty opening it.
Our own @castanea may have further insightsâŚ
Seedling Chestnut Trees Versus Grafted Chestnut Trees
For new commercial chestnut growers in the US, one of the first decisions they have to make is whether to plant seedling trees or grafted trees for nut production. For growers who are just growing chestnuts for their own usage, these issues are not as important, but the same analysis still applies. Different issues are involved if you are planting trees for rootstock, or to produce seed nuts, and those topics will be briefly mentioned as well.
If you donât want to read this entire article and are just looking for a short answer, here it is:
SHORT ANSWER
If you are planting European and Japanese/Korean trees on the west coast, or their hybrids, plant grafted trees for nut production. You may want to plant seedling trees for rootstock use. Chinese trees are normally not available for planting in the west, and when they are, are generally poorly suited for west coast growing conditions.
If you are planting Chinese trees (or hybrids) in the eastern part of the US, plant seedling trees in zones 4-7 for nut production and rootstock. You may also want a few grafted trees to produce seed nuts, but should not rely on them for nut production. Plant both grafted and seedling trees for nut production in zones 8 and 9.
Japanese trees may do well in cooler areas, such as the northeast, but not in the oppressively hot and humid areas of the Deep South. The dividing line between good areas and areas that are too hot are not clear, but wherever you grow them, grafted Japanese trees are superior to seedling trees for nut production. Japanese seedlings should be grown only for rootstock.
Pure European trees, grafted or seedling, are poorly suited to most eastern growing conditions and should not be grown except in limited areas.
ANALYSIS
THERE ARE TWO CHESTNUT INDUSTRIES IN THE US - WEST COAST AND EASTERN
There are basically two chestnut industries in the US, the west coast industry, which is primarily sativa based, and the eastern industry, which is primarily mollissima based. For purposes of this article, Iâm considering any state east of Colorado to be an eastern growing region. As a practical matter though, chestnuts are seldom grown in the states extending south from North Dakota to Oklahoma, although there are some limited plantings in Kansas. There are also very few plantings in west Texas or western Oklahoma. In theory though, large areas of west Texas, and some parts of western Oklahoma, might be very good for production of both Chinese and European chestnuts, but thatâs a topic for another article.
In the western coastal states where chestnut production is centered (Washington, Oregon and California), summers are usually long and relatively dry, and in the California Central Valley they can also be very hot. Chestnut blight and gall wasp are not issues in the west, but phytophthora root rot is widely spread. Very few Chinese chestnuts are grown anywhere on the west coast. European trees and hybrids predominate. Chinese trees can be found occasionally in the Pacific NW, but the trees grow better and produce better in areas with warmer summers. Small trees also do not handle summer drought well, and large Chinese plantings in California in the 1940s and 1950s were all gone by the late 1960s.
In many of the eastern states, summer humidity is typically far higher than in western states, and trees are faced with a wider range of insect pests and diseases. Chestnut blight is found in many areas of the east, and gall wasp continues to spread, along with other tree pests. Phytophthora root rot is also found in many of the warmer areas of the east. Very few European chestnuts are grown in the eastern US. Chinese trees and hybrids predominate. Japanese trees can be found occasionally, more often in northeastern states.
WHY EUROPEAN GRAFTED TREES ARE BETTER FOR COMMERCIAL NUT PRODUCTION ON THE WEST COAST
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Seedling trees from average European trees in the US often produce poor quality nuts and/or poor quality trees. Either the nuts are tiny, donât peel well, and/or have unacceptable flavor. Some are even âspittersâ â so bad that you will spit them out.
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There is often a large drop off in tree and nut quality from the best cultivars to their seedlings
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On the other hand, most grafted European trees reproduce the qualities of the ortet pretty well.
On the west coast, European cultivar orchards prevail over seedling orchards easily. The nut quality of the average European cultivar is far superior to that of the average European seedling. European grafted trees often reproduce the qualities of the ortet. On the other hand, European seedling trees rarely produce nuts that come anywhere near the quality of available cultivars. The poster child for this issue is âColossalâ. I have sampled nuts from hundreds of âColossalâ seedlings. Maybe 3 or 4 trees produced decent quality nuts. Most had poor nut quality, small nuts, multiple embryos, and/or pellicles that would not peel at all.
European hybrids graft better and grow more strongly than Chinese grafted trees, with fewer incidences of delayed graft union failure. So itâs an easy decision to choose grafted trees over seedling trees when planting a west coast commercial orchard. You can still plant European seedlings for later top working, but youâre going to know going into the project that 90% or more of those seedlings are going to be of such poor quality that they will need to be topworked.
WHY CHINESE SEEDLING TREES ARE OFTEN BETTER FOR COMMERCIAL NUT PRODUCTION THAN GRAFTED CHINESE TREES IN THE EASTERN US
1.Seedling trees from average Chinese trees in the US produce good quality nuts. Even poor quality Chinese seedling trees have palatable nuts and most are good.
2.Seedling trees of high quality Chinese parents often produce seedlings with exceptional nut quality.
3.Grafted Chinese trees do not consistently reproduce the qualities of the ortet. They will produce nut flavors but not always nut size or productivity, which are often the reason the grafted trees were planted.
The first photo below exemplifies one of the issues facing mollissima growers. The large nut in the center is a âJennyâ nut from the ortet, the original Jenny tree. The smaller nuts surrounding it are also Jenny nuts, but from grafted Jenny trees.
- Grafted Chinese trees can have a significant death rate in zones 5-7. The nursery that sells the largest number of chestnut trees in the US is probably Chestnut Hill in Florida. They used to sell primarily grafted trees but now sell only seedling trees. I have never seen a formal statement from them as to why they switched to seedling trees but the perception among many within the chestnut community is that they had too many grafted trees that did not perform as expected, or that simply died.
Thereâs an assumption among many newer chestnut growers that grafted Chinese trees reproduce the qualities of the ortet. In the US in zones 5-7 that is often not true. There are no consistent rootstocks for Chinese trees nor even a consistent method of grafting. The same cultivar on different stock can result in different sized nuts, different flowering times, and different nut drop timing. At one time I had four grafts of Qing. Their nut drop times were as much as three weeks apart and eventually two of the grafts died while a third was doing very poorly. Nut size ranged from medium-large on the best tree to barely larger than a bean on the worst tree.
Chinese trees are far less vigorous and heal a graft union far more slowly than a European tree. As long as a graft wound on a Chinese tree is healing, a Chinese tree is more inclined to minimize nut production, succumb to disease, insects or drought, and to throw up suckers. And any kind of issue during the healing period â excess heat, sunburned branches, drought, extreme cold or even a mild blight infection can slow down growth and nut production, and even result in delayed graft union failures. A grafted Chinese tree may take 3-4 years to fully heal a graft union. A European tree can often do so in one growing season. Grafted Chinese trees are far more prone to grafting issues and delayed graft failures than European trees.
When growers compare the alleged theoretical benefits of grafted Chinese trees with seedling Chinese trees, they list consistency of nut size, nut drop and total production as advantages of grafted trees. But these alleged advantages often do not exist, especially in climate zones 5-7. They are more likely to exist, if at all, in grafted trees in zones 8 and 9.
If your primary concern is nut flavor, grafted Chinese trees will reproduce the flavors of nuts from the ortet, but nut size and productivity are often lost. Chinese grafted trees frequently do a poor job of maintaining the nut size of the original tree. A grafted Gillet tree (European/Japanese hybrid) will come close to reproducing the size of the original Gillet nuts (see second photo below of Gillet nuts from a graft), but many grafted Chinese trees such as Qing and Eaton will not reproduce large nut size in their grafted trees. Grafted Chinese trees are well known for frequently overproducing nuts which results in smaller nut size. Of course, there are some chestnut growers who have had good successes with grafted trees in zone 6, but there are usually more who have not.
Chinese seedling trees from high quality parents, on the other hand, are very likely to produce seedlings with very good nuts, and to grow faster, grow larger and be more productive than grafted Chinese trees. Chinese seedling trees are more consistent at producing good quality eating nuts than are European seedling trees. A grafted tree may start producing nuts more quickly, but a seedling tree will normally surpass it in a few years. Also, if you are planting grafted trees for nut production, you really should cut all nuts and flowers off the tree for the first few years anyway. When a trees starts producing nuts and flowers, tree growth slows down. Trees that produce heavily when theyâre small take much longer get larger. Larger trees produce more nuts. Smaller trees produce fewer nuts than larger trees. Many new chestnut growers are focused on getting as many nuts as they can as quickly as possible. That will simply reduce future nut production.
Tom Wahl of Red Fern Farm had this to say about the production issue:
âMany people want grafted trees so they can get faster production, but that addiction to faster production will eventually bite them in the pocketbook. The sooner a grafted tree starts producing, the slower it grows. Small trees produce fewer nuts. This is not rocket science here. If you let a 3 year old 6 foot tall grafted tree start producing it will take it a long time to make it to 10 feet tall. Meanwhile a seedling should make it to 10 feet in 4 to 5 years at the latest. ALL chestnut trees slow down growth once they start producing. The idea that you production sooner from grafted trees is an illusion because you shouldnât be letting them produce nuts when they are very small.â
You can find more comments on the benefits of planting Chinese seedling trees on Tomâs website-
Tomâs longer article on the seedling vs grafted issue is also linked at the bottom of this article.
When proponents of grafted Chinese trees compare statistics on nut production, they also sometimes (often?) forget to compare the production data on dead grafted trees. They simply compare the average nut production of surviving grafted trees to the average nut production of surviving seedling tees. That may sound superficially reasonable, but it isnât. The vast majority of seedling trees will survive while a significant percentage of grafted trees may die. If you plant 10 grafted trees that will produce 100 lbs of nuts each, your yearly nut production would be 1000 lbs. But if 3 grafted trees die, your 10 trees are only producing 700 lbs. If you plant 10 seedling trees that produce 80 lbs of nuts each and no trees die, your 10 seedling trees will produce 800 lbs of nuts. And this is indeed the reality of planting grafted trees in zones 5-7 â many will die and many more will probably have reduced production.
Chinese trees generally produce seedlings with nuts of acceptable eating quality. Even when a Chinese seedling tree produces nuts of lower quality than the parent, the nuts are usually still pretty good. This is true even if you are planting seedlings from average quality Chinese trees. This is vastly different from the experience you might have with European seedlings where the quality gap between grafted trees and seedling trees can be immense. And if you are planting seedlings from the best Chinese trees, the nut quality of many seedlings will match the parents or be even better. This was well illustrated in the main chestnut orchard planted at the USDA Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Laboratory in Byron, Georgia in the late 1960s or early 1970s. This planting contained some grafted trees but a much larger number of seedling trees. The seedlings in this orchard originated from many of the best Chinese trees in the USDA collection in Beltsville, Maryland. The Beltsville collection had some exceptional Chinese trees as well as most of the best grafted Chinese cultivars that were known in the US at that time. I evaluated the seedlings at the Byron orchard in multiple trips from approximately 1993 through 2002. The overall quality of the seedling trees may have been better than in any Chinese chestnut orchard planted in the US before or since. I picked out at least 20 trees that were exceptional and worthy of propagation. Another 30-40 trees were also very good. Even the least of the trees were still quite good. Most of these trees were lost when the Byron orchard was cut down. âPayneâ was one named cultivar that still survives. Seednuts from trees in that orchard have resulted in many good seedlings including the cultivars âJennyâ and âEmalynâs Purpleâ.
The excellent results you can get from planting Chinese seedling orchards was also shown in the Fort Valley, Georgia orchard that was planted with Chinese seedling trees in the 1960s. The source of these seedling trees was also the USDA chestnut collection in Beltsville, MD. This orchard was written up in the NNGA annual report many years ago. Some of the seedling trees were quite impressive and included the named cultivar âMagnoliaâ. Unfortunately the entire orchard was eventually destroyed to try to control a gall wasp infestation.
Similarly, the 1990 Auburn University seedling planting in Camp Hill Alabama, in the warmest part of zone 7, shows the excellent results that can be obtained from planting seednuts from quality mollissima cultivars. This orchard was allegedly planted using seednuts from the Auburn cultivars Homestead, Cropper and Leader. There are at least 10 seedlings in that orchard that are distinctly better than the three cultivars they came from. One of those seedlings is AU Super.
In China, in zones 5, 6 and 7, the vast majority of plantings are seedling trees. In zone 7, grafted trees have become more common in the last 30 years, but most trees are grafted on older stock (3-5 years old) that is top worked in the ground and not on young (1-2 years old) trees in nursery beds. In zones 8 and 9 grafted trees are dominant in newer orchards, and in many older orchards as well.
Below is a post made to the FB Chestnut Group on July 16, 2020 by Tom Wahl of Red Fern Farm in Iowa, with respect to comparing seedlings and grafted trees.
âThere will be variation in how they do, regardless of whether they are seedlings or grafted. In fact, in our part of the world, half sibling seedling Chinese chestnuts will be considerably more uniform in size, growth form, survival, and productivity, compared to a group of their grafted parents.â
In a personal communication from Greg Miller at Empire Chestnuts/Route 9 Coop, he revealed some of his thoughts about the superiority of Chinese chestnut seedling orchards-
âA big problem that we face is that there is a large number of cultivars or potential cultivars that all look good in terms of nut quality. And when we plant their seedlings, at least half of them are as good or better than their mother (if good fathers are in the neighborhood)â
With respect to clonal propagation, that has so far been more successful with sativa trees than with mollissima trees. In Europe clonal propagation is now commercially viable.
A very good article from Tom Wahl on using Chinese seedling trees for commercial production is linked below -
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No, chestnut seedlings so not produce the same nuts as the original mother tree. Thatâs why grafted trees exist.
Chestnut seedlings combine the genetics of both parent trees.
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Are all them graft compatible? Have several chinese ones that I want to graft over to something better.
I see several nurseries selling seedlings of improved varieties. Would you consider those worthwhile growing?
Robert,
I have minimal experience with chestnuts.
Planted some Dunstan seednuts 25 yrs ago (despite claims that they are AmericanXChinese, they are, for all intents & purposes, just kind of mediocre to average Chinese, with little or no American genetics in their background) .
I also have a few seedling Chinese chestnuts, from nuts that I gathered around town, that I grafted over to Quing and an Ozark chinkapin selection, 5-10 years ago, still stuck in nursery row, but bearing nuts.
Graft incompatibility can be an issue - and may account for why some varieties I attempted to graft did not take (but⌠could just as likely be âoperator errorâ, as well), and my two successful grafted trees could just âwake up deadâ one dayâŚ
My understanding is that nuts produced by good Chinese and hybrid seedlings from superior parents - while not exact copies of the parent - are often very good - and in some cases, as good or better than the parents.
I got 25 chinese chestnut seedlings from Mark Shepard agroforestry last spring. Wont be able to speak for the quality of the nuts for quite a while yet, but supposedly they produce decent quality ones. The price per seedling is pretty good, but unfortunately you have to buy them in bundles of 25.
Chinese wood generally grafts on Chinese stock, but it doesnât always graft well. Grafting failures are common and delayed graft union failures can also be common for certain cultivars like Qing.
I have three grafted hybrid chestnuts planted in North Georgia (8A). I planted them years ago before I learned that I should have planted Chinese seedlings. I subsequently obtained 5 high-quality Chinese seedlings from Route 9 and have them in pots, but I really only have room to plant one or two of the seedlings unless I rip out the grafted trees and replace them with the seedlings. Iâm trying to figure out what I should do, and if I should bite the bullet and pull out one or more of my grafted trees.
The grafted trees I have are Szego (crenata x pumila x mollissima), Schlarbaum (crenata x mollissima), and Revival (mollissima x dentata, for some small value of dentata). They are about 50 feet apart.
From what I have read (please correct me if I am wrong), Szego produces large, excellent quality nuts (but since my tree is grafted, its nuts will be smaller). It was thought to be blight-resistant when I got it, but it has since been confirmed that it is susceptible. Revival is the best of the Dunstan hybrids, produces a small but very good nut, is practically immune to blight, and is particularly prone to delayed graft failure. Schlarbaum produces large nuts (again, they will be smaller for me because the tree is grafted), but the nut quality is not so good as the other two, and it produces sterile male pollen. Schlarbaum is believed to have a good degree of blight resistance. Deer broke through the cage of my Schlarbaum tree and severely mauled it last year, so it is practically starting over, and would be a good candidate for removal given that it is not contributing to pollination.
My questions:
(1) Delayed graft failure. This season will be the fourth leaf for my grafted trees. Although graft failure can occur even a decade after a chestnut tree was planted, I would assume that most graft failures, if they are going to occur, will occur within the first few years. Is this a reasonable assumption â that my trees have passed out of the window of greatest peril â or am I just rolling the dice every year that today might be the year that the graft fails, with equal odds for each year?
(2) Blight. To my knowledge, there are no nearby chestnut trees, but generations ago, the woods used to be full of dentata before the blight wiped them out. Due to the heat and humidity, conditions here would be particularly conducive to blight. Are my Szego and Schlarbaum living on borrowed time?
@castanea What would you do? I am not starting a chestnut orchard and donât have the space for planting large numbers of trees and culling the ones that arenât good. I love chestnuts and would like to have some good ones for home production, but I donât want to tend to trees that are probably doomed anyway only to see them struck down in my lifetime. Should I rip out my young grafted trees and replace them with the seedlings (basically start over)?
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50 feet apart is pretty far. Iâd plant the others in between. No need to waste anything you already paid for regardless of what it does in the future.
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The grafted chestnuts are roughly equidistant from each other, but there is a very old native pine in the center of the triangle. It may eventually need to be removed, but for now, I have less space than it seems.
If the Schlarbaum is not grafted on pure Chinese stock, I would replace the Schlarbaum with a pure Chinese seedling, then graft a Chinese cultivar onto it when it gets 3-4 years old. Schlarbaum is living on borrowed time. If it is grafted on pure Chinese stock, then top-work the stock with a Chinese cultivar.
Delayed graft union failures can occur 5-15 years later and sometimes do with Qing and Revival. I like the Revival nut but even if the graft does not fail, nuts will often tend to be small on grafted trees. I would top-work it to a pure Chinese cultivar that grafts better. Revival has very little American genetics, if any.
Szego may be living on borrowed time. If itâs grafted on pure Chinese stock, cut off Szego and graft a Chinese cultivar onto it. If itâs not on pure Chinese stock, take it out completely and replace with a pure Chinese seedling to be grafted laterâŚ
Trees like Szego, Schlarbaum and Revival are good trees but in many areas itâs better to plant their seedlings, as long as the seedlings have good Chinese pollen parents.
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If I planted Colossal chestnuts last fall, when should I see them sprout and grow?
THanks,
John S
PDX OR
Iâm
Trying my best to do research into planting chestnuts for seedlings. Does the actual nut matter what to plant? Iâm looking for chestnuts to plant but having a tough time finding anything local to me. I might buy some off Etsy but not really sure what to look for. Any tips on what to look for or if anybody has them to sell would appreciate it!
I just ordered 25 Resilient seedlings.
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