[MassChestnutOrchards] Striking out

Tue Jul 7 22:28:45 EDT 2009

Yvonne,

Weather permitting, I will pollinate two 20-bag roadside trees with a 
single Nanking B2 pollen, one this week, and one next.

Also, I will do an American tree that survives at Tower Hill with (what 
I believe to be) pollen from the same Graves parent that was used in 
'08 on the Wayland mother of the  seedlings going to Westerly this 
summer. Some from that line are planted at Lancaster MA, and I hope in 
addition to your seedlings, to be able to provide you with plenty more 
nuts in that line for planting in Westerly in 2010. Charlotte tends to 
identify this line as Maynard, but recently it has been produced in 
Wayland, and now at both Tower Hill and Wayland!

I put up about 25 bags at Tower Hill for that purpose, and also have 
bagged an American in my Wayland orchard, a sibling of the one I 
mentioned at Tower Hill, (ca 25 bags also). Thus I will try to augment 
this "Maynard"line even further, but "try" is the operative word, as I 
doubt at this point that the Wayland tree will make it to the fall.-I 
think the prospects for the Tower Hill tree are a lot better.

  At this point I have given up in disgust for this year on the nice 
Natick tree I was going to do. I did get a bucket truck operator to 
agree to help, but the damned owner of the office building cannot be 
bothered to give me permission, despite several phone calls and e-mails 
to various associated s
ecretaries and members of his family. Charlotte, 
you will be amused to know that as far as I can tell he,  a Mr. Wen, IS 
in China.

  And at this point I still hope to manage to pollinate the Natick tree 
in 2010 to provide my Wayland orcjhard with its second Nanking line.    
 John Emery Original Message-----
From: Yvonne Federowicz <Yvonne_Federowicz at brown.edu>
To: masschestnutorchards at masschestnut.org
Sent: Tue, Jul 7, 2009 5:44 pm
Subject: Re: [MassChestnutOrchards] Striking out

Answering my own question.. It looks from Charlotte’s email on 7/7 that 
John is going to pollinate a Maynard tree for Westerly, RI.  I hope 
this is true still, Westerly’s lines are getting pretty separated in 
time from each other.

If all goes well with the E.Greenwich, RI tree, we could have more 
(Nanking) nuts from it than will fit at South Kingstown, so perhaps 
some of those can go to a MA orchard?  John’s?

However I see that Charlotte has a separate Nanking pollen for John’s 
use...? Should I do 2 different Nankings on E.Greenwich?

 It has 75 bags, lots of multiple females per bag.  Also heavily 
blighted but looks sort of hypovirulent, bark is similar to the old 
surviving Glocester RI mother tree.

We will also hopefully have:
 Exeter (Nanking) -> South Kingstown, and
 Coventry (Clapper) -> Glocester

On 7/7/09 5:34 PM, "Yvonne Federowicz" <Yvonne_Federow
icz at brown.edu> 
wrote:

Is anyone else pollinating in MA this year, or were these the only 
prospects?

Thanks, Yvonne

On 7/7/09 5:05 PM, "Rufin Van Bossuyt" <rufin at charter.net> wrote:

Not having much luck this year. I was planning to pollinate a tree in 
Carver and one at Quabbin reservoir. I had an okay from NSTAR to help 
with the Carver tree. Then they had to decline as twelve electric 
circuits had to be trimmed on a priority basis. I went to the tree 
yesterday with a stepladder and pole to pull limbs down. Almost all of 
the flowers were at the crown and I hadn't been sure that I could have 
reached them from the bucket truck. Only a few of the flowers were 
lower and I could not reach them. Live and dead limbs are in the crown 
and large dead areas are along the trunk. Not sure if the limbs or tree 
would have lived through harvest if pollinated.
Today I went out to Quabbin ready to bag a tree. The tree is at the 
side of one of the gravel roads. It has no blight. It had been shaded 
and was not flowering. The DCR staff cut the shading trees down and 
last year it flowered and it was pollinated but only provided 32 nuts.
Today I had Bill Davis of MA Fish and Wildlife with me, Rick Farrell, 
area Arborist for National Grid, and a Bucket truck and two man crew 
provided by National Grid. As we approached the tree I could see a lot 
of catkins and it was20ready for bagging. However; as I went up in the 
bucket I wasn't seeing any female flowers. I found only 3 female 
flowers.The new growth was lush and about two feet long. The leaves 
were dark green. Still no blight.
Bill and I then drove down to the tree we pollinated twice before. The 
crown is dead and lower branches had a few flowers. The seedling nearby 
is still alive.
Bill and I looked at a tree near the shore of the Wachusett Reservoir 
that is tall but was shaded until DCR staff cut down the shading trees 
a few years ago. It now had a few flowers. No blight.

Maybe next year will be better. We take two steps ahead and fall back 
one but we overall make progress.

Rufin

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