Natural size Heartnut. Photo 10/26/38 by C. Weschcke. Gellatly variety.

Beechnut

The beechnut, Fagus ferruginea, belonging to the oak family, is one of the giants of the forest, growing to great size and age. Even very old beech trees have smooth bark and this, in earlier and more rustic days, was much used for the romantic carving of lovers' names, as scars still visible on such ancient trees testify. The wood itself is dense and hard, even more so than hard maple, and is considered good lumber. Beechnut is one of the few nut trees with a more shallow and ramified root system as contrasted with that of most, which, as in the oak, walnut and hickory, is a tap root system. This fact suggests that in those localities where beeches grow wild, grafts made on such trees, and transplanted, would survive and grow well.

Perhaps one of the reasons why very little propagation is done with beeches is that no outstanding variety has ever been discovered. Although the nut shell is thin and the meat sweet and oily, the kernel is so small that one must crack dozens of them to get a satisfying sample of their flavor. This, of course, prevents their having any commercial value as a nut. There is also the fact that the beechnut is the slowest growing of all the common nut trees, requiring from twenty to thirty years to come into bearing as a seedling. Of course this could be shortened, just as it is in propagating hickories and pecans, by making grafts on root systems which are ten or more years old, as explained in the chapter on heartnuts. However, I know of no nursery in which beechnuts are propagated in this way.

My attempts to grow beechnut trees in Wisconsin have met with little success. About the year 1922, I obtained 150 trees from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries. I planted these on level ground which had clay near the surface with limestone about a foot under it. Although all of these trees seemed to start satisfactorily, some even growing about a foot, within two or three years they had all died. I decided they were not hardy but I now realize that the character of the soil was responsible for their gradual death; they should be planted in a limestone or calcareous soil, preferably of the fine sandy type, the main requisite being plenty of moisture because of their shallow root system. Since then, I have purchased beechnut seeds several times from various seedsmen, but none of these seeds has ever sprouted. I think this is because beechnuts, like chestnuts, must be handled with great care to retain their viability.

In 1938, I ordered 100 beechnut trees from the Hershey Nurseries of Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Although these trees were set in sandy soil, there are now only about five of them alive, and of these, only four are growing well enough to suggest that they will some day become big trees.

Beechnuts must be protected against mice and rabbits as these species of rodents are very fond of bark and young growth of these trees and I have every reason to believe that deer are in the same category.

Oaks

Although the acorns produced by the red oak are very bitter and consistently wormy, those from the white oak are more edible. In my own exploring, I have found one tree, apparently a hybrid between the red and white oaks, which bears good acorns. The nuts, which are long and thin, are generally infested with weevils. If there were a demand for such a nut tree, I'm sure that it could easily be grafted on oak roots. During favorable seasons, when these edible nuts were of good size and free from worms, I have carried them in my pocket and enjoyed munching on them. I found that their flavor, like that of chestnuts, was improved by roasting.

Acorns are a balanced food and contain enough starch to make them readily assimilated, except for their bitterness. They are a good food for farm animals and chickens. I have kept a flock of goats in good condition by feeding them acorns during the winter. It isn't necessary to grind them for such use. I have read that Indians at one time prepared acorns for their own use by storing them in bags submerged in cold running water. This not only extracted the bitterness but also it probably discouraged the development of weevil eggs.

Oak trees are generally prolific and are regular bearers, but of course, what they are widely known and loved for is the beauty of their leaves in the autumn. No one doubts their esthetic value, which will keep them forever popular whether they come into demand as a grafted nut tree or not.

Chestnuts

Another of our ornamental nut trees is the chestnut, also of the oak family, classified under the genus Castanea, which grows into a large, beautiful tree with wide-spread branches. Chestnuts do not grow well on limestone soil and always fail in the heavy blue clay so common on farm lands in this part of the country. It is best for their growth that the soil be gravelly and slightly acid.

The chestnut has always been a good timber tree. Its wood, although not as hard as the red oak, resembles it in grain. The beams of many old pioneer homes are found to be chestnut. It is said that this is one of few woods to give a warning groan under too heavy a burden before it cracks or breaks. Chestnut wood is very durable in contact with the soil, outlasting all others except possibly black walnut and cedar. It contains so much siliceous matter in its pores that it quickly dulls chisels and saws used in working it.

The chestnut trees at my nursery were grown from mixed hybrid seeds which I obtained from Miss Amelia Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois. Almost all of the seeds she first sent me, in 1926, spoiled while they were stored during the winter. But Miss Riehl sent me more the following spring, many of which proved hardy. In 1937, the oldest of these trees produced staminate bloom for the first time. I naturally expected a crop of nuts from it that year, but none developed. The same thing happened in 1938. I then wrote to Miss Riehl about it, also asking her where to look for the pistillate blossoms. Her reply was a very encouraging one in which she wrote that the pistillate blossoms appear at the base of the catkins or staminate blooms, but that it is quite a common thing for chestnut trees to carry the latter for several years before producing pistillate blossoms. She also explained that it was very unlikely that the tree would fertilize its own blooms, so that I should not expect one tree to bear until other nearby chestnuts were also shedding pollen. This occurred the next year and another chestnut close to the first one set a few nuts. It was not until 1940 that the tree which had blossomed first, actually bore nuts.

In 1940, I crossed the pistillate blossoms of this tree with pollen from a Chinese variety called Carr, resulting in half a dozen nuts which I planted.

Since the chestnuts in these parts do not bloom usually until early July we can expect chestnuts to be a more reliable crop than butternuts, for instance, which bloom very early in the spring about May 1 to 15th.

Having had this reward for my efforts I took much more interest in chestnut growing and ordered trees of the Chinese varieties, Castanea mollissma from J. Russell Smith, H. F. Stoke, and John Hershey. Some of these were seedlings and some were grafted trees, not over a dozen of them alive today and none have produced mature nuts. Seemingly they have not been hardy although they have grown large enough to produce both staminate and pistillate blooms; they have never winter killed back to the ground, however.

Also, I have been planting nuts from all sources from which I could obtain them, mostly of the Chinese chestnut type. Some of these nuts were results of crosses, and showed their hybridity in the young seedlings that resulted there from. Today I have perhaps 150 of such young seedlings which I am pampering with the hope of getting something worthwhile from them. One of the big thrills of chestnut growing was the result of a chestnut that I picked up from a plant that was no higher than 2 feet, growing at Beltsville, Maryland in the government testing ground there, in 1937. My records show that this plant began to bear nuts in 1943 and have subsequently borne several crops in between the times that it was frozen to the ground and grew up again, which happened at least three times. Like most chestnuts this one has to be pollinated by taking the staminate bloom from a dwarfed chestnut nearby whose bloom coincides with the blossoming of the female flowers of this Chinese hybrid. Chestnuts rarely set any nuts that produce mature seed from their own pollen but depend on cross-pollination. The nut from this hybrid is also the largest of any that I have grown and to my taste is a palatable one. It may not rank among the best ones of known varieties today, but for our climate I would consider it unusually large and good. Experimentally, I have been able to produce new plants from this tree by layering young shoots coming from the roots. This generally requires two years to make a well-rooted plant before they are cut off and transplanted. This alternative of propagating by grafting or budding is considered a better method if it can be practiced, as it gives a plant on its own roots instead of the roots of some unknown seedling stock.