Breeding nuts is nuts (okay, maybe not, but I can think of easier ways to make a living)

As I've mentioned before, breeding fruit is a long, expensive prospect, and in most cases not one that would attract anyone interested in actually turning a profit. And everything that makes fruit breeding a pain goes double for nut breeding. And yet here is some one who appears to be breeding chestnuts and hazelnuts commercially. In general, I think that's a dubious prospect, althugh we could certainly use the cultivars, but what do I know? Nuts are a little outside my area of expertise.

I don't know anything more about Badgersett than what I read on the website, but Phil Rutter, the guy in charge, has kept the place running since 1977, which suggests that he knows what he's doing. He's also founder and past president of the American Chestnut Foundation, as well as past president of the Northern Nut Growers Association (NNGA).

Anyway, just came across the site and thought I'd share.

(In other nut news, my family and I saw a really big old pecan tree this weekend. Very impressive, especially considering that pecan trees seem to me rather prone of breaking at the slightest provocation. I didn't get any pictures--we forgot the camera, but I'm going to head back, mainly to take a picture of the giant live oak nearby.

Grove of American Chestnuts Found!

Looks like a whole grove of American Chestnut trees have been found! These are notable not only because there's a number of them and they appear to have escaped the blight, but also because they are at the extreme southern limit of the species and near FDR's "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia.

Rare American Chestnut Trees Discovered (ABC News)

(For those who don't know and want more info on why this is signficant, try here).

Update: The original article states that there are six trees in the stand, but today on NPR the discoverer mentioned that a cursory walk around the area turned up another one nearby, so it's possible that there may be a considerable pocket of them. He hypothesized that the dry microclimate in the area may make it difficult for the blight pathogen to survive.

More old tree stuff.

Before I posted the article on medlars and apparently became the source of all knowledge on that particular species, the article most Google-searchers seemed to be gravitating towards was the one on the Endicott Pear, America's oldest fruit tree. In that vein, and since I've already established that I'm counting chestnuts as fruit, I thought I'd point you folks to these nifty illustrations of ancient (350+ years old) Spanish Chestnut (Castanea sativa) trees growing in the estate of Croft Castle, near Leominster, U.K. They call Phytophthora a virus, rather than a fungus, but we'll forgive them. The artist is eighty, after all.

That page is part of a bigger ATF (Ancient Tree Forum) page, hosted by the U.K.'s Woodland Trust. Though very little of it has anything to do with fruit, there are a number of very old, very impressive trees on display there, and a lot of good information on the how's and why's of preserving them (the website is very much focused on the U.K., though there are links to organizations in other countries). It never fails to amaze me how a tree, something which has aboslutely no way to avoid anything in its environment, can still adjust and survive for hundreds of years, molded and changed by its experiences.

The other fruit angle on this whole Ancient Tree site is that they are selling wine from Comte Cathare to support their preservation efforts. I'm a big fan of wine and grapes, and it's a good cause, but they lose points by buying into the whole biodynamics thing, which is a big load of nonsense, in my humble opinion. Never underestimate the ability of human beings to take a few vaguely good ideas and then build out from them to create a whole bunch of crap. Ah well. I'll save that rant for another day.

By the way, I'm back from vacation.