The Nut Culturist: A Treatise on Propogation, Planting, and Cultivation of Nut Bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United StatesFuller, Andrew S. (Andrew Samuel)
Science
The Nut Culturist: A Treatise on Propogation, Planting, and Cultivation of Nut Bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United States
Fuller, Andrew S. (Andrew Samuel)
Nuts
As a rule, we find only one grub in a nut, of the American sweet
chestnut, but in the larger varieties of the European and Japanese,
two or more is not unusual, which rather favors the idea that the
female weevil does possess something akin to reason, which guides
her in locating stores of food available for her progeny. I have
never observed that the weevils had any choice among varieties, all
being subject to their attacks alike, provided all were growing in
equally favorable positions. But if the trees are of different
sizes, some tall and others short, some exposed to the winds and
others protected, then the ravages of this pest will, no doubt, be
as variable as the surrounding conditions. As the weevils emerge
from the ground in spring or early summer, they will naturally seek
the nuts most convenient and on the small trees, then those on the
lower branches of the larger ones, while those on the upper part of
the tree, where they are fully exposed to the winds, may wholly
escape the attacks of these pests. This leads me to think that
whoever attempts to cut off native chestnut forests, with the
expectation of renewal with the larger varieties, by grafting the
sprouts, will find the chestnut weevil a rather formidable enemy. I
have found it so on a limited number of trees in my own grounds,
that are grown from grafted sprouts near large native specimens, the
weevils destroying nearly every nut; but out in the field, away from
the woods, and where the young trees are scattered and exposed to
the full sweep of the winds, the nuts are sound and free from insect
enemies. The only remedy is to collect and destroy the weevils,
which is not a serious matter where only the larger varieties are
cultivated.
=Diseases of the Chestnut.=--I have never noticed any special
disease among chestnuts, neither do I find any mentioned in European
works on forestry. The nearest approach to any such malady being
recorded as having appeared in this country, is found in a paragraph
in Hough's "Report on Forestry," 1877, p. 470, where the author
copies from Prof. W. C. Kerr, State Geologist, North Carolina, as
follows: "The chestnut was formerly abundant in the Piedmont region,
down to the country between the Catawba and Yadkin rivers, but
within the last thirty years they have mostly perished. They are now
found east of the Blue Ridge only, on higher ridges and spurs of the
mountains. They have suffered injury here, and are dying out both
here and beyond the Blue Ridge. They are much less fruitful than
they were a generation ago, and the crop is much more uncertain."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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