B-71
BRIEF:
The most widely tested of Greg Miller's numbered B-series families, with over four hundred trees in the ground across the country. Still under evaluation here.
DETAILED:
Of the three B-series families we grow, B-71 is the one Greg Miller's program put the most faith in. Around 426 trees are planted across participating orchards in fifteen states, more than B65 and more than three times as many as B-68.
That is worth something on its own. These are working codes from a breeding program rather than named cultivars, and no published description exists for any of them. But the number of trees a family gets planted is a rough measure of what the breeder thought was worth finding out.
The background is uncertain. A related selection, Miller's B-99, came from a Korean chestnut and was chosen for vigor, straight form, and surviving wet ground where neighboring trees died. Whether B-71 shares that character we cannot yet say, and it may mean these lean toward timber form rather than nut production.
Our trees are part of the answer. We will report what they do as they come into bearing.