I used to have a row of pretty large common horse chestnuts (until they died of a disease that has affected most of the horse chestnuts in western Europe). They were not very old, but they grew at an incredible rate. In the early days as a collector, I used them to get some shade for hostas in containers. The chestnuts were extremely greedy feeders. Their roots grew into the pots and extracted every last bit of nutrients in it. The soil in which the trees grew was basically sand, with a top layer of 30 in. black garden soil. On a regular base I added a � in. layer of compost as a mulch. Well, the trees managed to turn the whole bunch into plain sand again: almost all of the "black" was eaten out of the soil. Maybe the japanese type is less greedy, but don't say I didn't warn you ! Rob

Well, I've got american chestnuts down both sides of the driveway.....lovely lawn trees for a big lawn. Some of my seedlings come from small nut selections, 2.8 grams or so, and the blue jays are in heaven. The larger nutted ones, 6 grams or so, are great for cooking, and munching. I have some half Chinese, half American ones, letting nature introgress blight resistance into our woods. The pure Chinese get overtopped too soon, but the halflings produce seed for quite a while. I've had catkins for 3 years now, but no burs , however some of my buddies have trees older than mine and they are producing lots of seednuts. They have been kind enough to share seed, grin. I don't see why both approaches wouldn't work. If you want the F1 generation to be male fertile though, you need to use a Chinese seed parent, not an American seed parent. If you intend instead to use male barren F1 generation to produce a backcross to pure americans in your woods already, use the American as the seed parent. The backcross 1 has some male fertile ones and they can pollinate each other and nature culls whatever ones didn't get at least some blight resistance and good tree form. Some of my F1's want to be bushes and I rogued them. Some of my BC1's want to be bushes too, so just plant lots and let nature cull.

I'll have to see if I can crank up the old camera, might not be until tomorrow though. Before putting it outside it had spent about the first week of its life in an east facing window (as did the older tree) - basically when it went outside it went underneath the same window (as did the other one) so both were receiving sunlight in the morning only. In other words both have had the exact same growing conditions, but the youngest one went outside a little earlier in its life. Having said that, an additional observation - even while the leaves were forming on the youngest one (and while it was still inside) the leaf formation was "odd" and even then they were a pale green, almost yellow. In addition to the above I should have added this to the above message: the "umbrealla" leaf formation is getting tighter and tighter. Also, the leaves are quite firm, so it doesn't appear to be "wilting" as such. The stem is still good and straight too. Not sure if that helps with the diagnosis.

"An odd thing is the way they drop forcefully from the tree as though being thrown." This is where the engineers who participate on this board feel they HAVE to wade in. The terminal velocity of a chestnut (horsechestnut is similar in size, density, and aerodynamics) is ~32.5 mph (Yildiz, 2009). Without sitting down and doing the required calculus, the nut should achieve 90+% of that terminal velocity in ~2 seconds from a height of ~50'. Shorter drop, slower speed. Higher drop, 32.5 mph....it's not going to be going faster than that. Having been hit by many a bee at 60mph, I can understand why a 32mph chestnut has the impression of being ejected forcefully from a tree. ref - Yildiz, M. U., Ozcan M. M., Calisir S., Demir F., Er F., 2009. Physico-Chemica Properties of Wild Chestnut Fruit Grown in Turkey. World Applied Sciences Journal 6(3): 365-372,2009