[Footnote 2: Formerly Associate Pomologist, U. S. Pecan Field Station, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Albany, Georgia.]
The Chinese chestnut grows well throughout the southern part of the natural range of the American chestnut and southward to the Gulf Coast, and possibly even into central Florida. Farther north it apparently grows and produces better crops along the Atlantic Coast than inland, thus indicating the need of this species for a long growing season and freedom from late spring and early fall frosts. In the plantings in Georgia, from Atlanta to the southward, no loss of crop from late spring frosts has ever been noted. In the Gulf States and northward along the Atlantic seaboard the Chinese chestnut tree is vigorous, healthy, and productive, coming into bearing at a fairly early age and thereafter producing regular crops. The trees grow to be rather large in size, developing a somewhat rounded form with a spread of branches about equal to the height. Without pruning when young many sprouts usually develop near the ground so that the mature tree has numerous trunks of about equal size, with the lower lateral branches resting on the ground.
Nearly all of the Chinese chestnut trees being grown at the present time are seedlings and exhibit a wide range of tree and nut characteristics. A few trees develop a somewhat more upright type of growth than that commonly seen, but this type is generally less productive than trees of more spreading habit, and the nuts are smaller and less desirable. Some trees showing the most upright type of growth originated from nuts imported from the more northern provinces of China and may represent a distinct strain or form of _Castanea mollissima_. The degree of incompatibility exhibited when southern China strains are grafted on northern China strains would indicate the same conclusion. Unfortunately, several different species or strains have been included in the plantings of most cooperators with the U. S. Department of Agriculture so that seedlings resulting from cross-pollination of these types may exhibit an even wider range of characteristics and performance from the standpoint of commercial production than is commonly seen at present. A few of these hybrids may be superior to pure _C. mollissima seedlings_ in certain important respects because of hybrid vigor, but taken as a whole the best types of _C. mollissima_ seedlings are superior to the other blight resistant species for purposes of nut production.