Third Annual Meeting of The Tennessee
Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation and Pollination Workshop
Saturday, June 12,
2004
Location: Bendabout Farms Cabin, McDonald, Tennessee, east
of Chattanooga (see directions below).
Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time)
Program:
9:00 Welcome and registration at Bendabout Farms cabin
10:00 Technical presentations and carpooling for a morning chestnut tour at Jeremy Bramblett's orchard. This is a brand new orchard on private land containing Chinese chestnut cultivars for commercial chestnut production. There are also plantings of hybrid American chestnut trees from TACF's backcross breeding program.
12:00 noon Lunch. Bring your own cold picnic lunch and beverages. There will also be a grill set up -- just bring your own hamburgers or hot dogs and buns.
12:30 Chapter business meeting. Announcements, election of new officers, formation of committees, goal-setting.
2:00 - 4:00 Pollination workshop at the Bendabout Farms chestnut orchard -- across the highway from the cabin. Demonstration and hands-on work emasculating, bagging and pollinating.
4:00-5:00 Meeting wrap-up. Strategy session for Tennessee chapter pollinations.
5:00 Meeting adjourns
Directions: Our meeting will be at "The Cabin" at Bendabout Farms in McDonald, TN. The Cabin is one mile east of McDonald Grocery, on the north side of Old Lee Highway, at the end of a long driveway that runs beside a horse pasture.
From the North and East: Take I-75 southbound to exit 20. Go east toward Cleveland on the US 64 (Cleveland bypass) about one mile and exit the bypass onto US 11 South / Old Lee Hwy / US 64 West. Go southwest on Old Lee Hwy 2.4 miles. Turn right into driveway along horse pasture to cabin.
From the South and West:
Take I-75 northbound to exit 11 toward
Ooltewah. Go east on US 11North / Old Lee Hwy / US 64 East about
6.5 miles through the village of McDonald and pass the McDonald
Grocery on your right. One mile past the grocery, turn left into
driveway along horse pasture to cabin.
About Bendabout Farms: The late William Raoul established the first chestnut breeding orchard (Orchard #1) at Bendabout Farms in the early 1990s by transplanting surviving American chestnuts from the forest. Two populations are represented: Lookout Mountain and central Mississippi. The Lookout Mountain trees are a sampling of the "local" American chestnuts and the Mississippi trees come from the extreme southernmost portion of the species' native range. These American chestnut trees have been used successfully in backcross breeding since they started blooming in 1996.
Mr. Raoul and his group of enthusiastic volunteers planted the second orchard at Bendabout Farms in 1996 using open pollinated seed (B2F2) from Meadowview. These TACF hybrids have grown very well and were screened for blight resistance in the summer of 2003 as part of the master's thesis project of Stephen Alexander.
Chattanooga Chestnut Tree Project
volunteers and students from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
planted Orchard #1 backcross progeny in the third orchard at Bendabout
Farms beginning in 1997. Orchard #3 now includes interspecific
F1 hybrids, second, third and fourth backcrosses hybrids and seedlings
and grafted clones of local and introduced Castanea cultivars.
J. Hill Craddock
Robert M. Davenport Associate Professor of Biology
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga TN 37403-2598 USA