Willamette
Open-pollinated seedling of Castanea dentata × C. mollissima hybrids
The record
- Parentage
- Open-pollinated seedling of Castanea dentata × C. mollissima hybrids
- Origin
- Robert D. Wallace · Chestnut Hill Nursery orchards, Alachua, Florida · patent issued 1990
- Rights
- patented — US Plant Patent PP7195, filed 13 June 1988 and issued 13 March 1990, inventor Robert D. Wallace of Alachua, Florida. Check the patent’s current term before propagating.
- Nut
- Extremely large, chocolate brown, very sweet and easy to peel
- Harvest
- Ripens mid-September
- Blight
- Described in the patent as highly genetically resistant to chestnut bark blight
Description
The clearest patented record in this file, and the reason the rights field exists.
It is an open-pollinated seedling out of the American × Chinese hybrids growing in the Chestnut Hill orchards, three generations on from a 1953 North Carolina cross by Dr. Robert T. Dunstan between a healthy American chestnut and a composite tree carrying three USDA-released Chinese selections — ‘Kuling’, ‘Meiling’ and ‘Nanking’. Seedlings of that first cross were backcrossed to the parents, the second generation went into the orchard, and nuts from the largest and sweetest of those produced the third generation this cultivar came from.
Where to find it
No source recorded. That does not mean the cultivar is unavailable, only that this record does not yet name a nursery carrying it. Point us at one and it goes in.