Chandler

BRIEF:
A South Carolina find with large, high-quality nuts at mid-season. Unusually for a chestnut, its seedlings tend to resemble the mother tree.

DETAILED:
Chandler was discovered in South Carolina and is prized for large nuts of high quality. Empire Chestnut Company carries it in Ohio and Route 9 Cooperative holds a graft, but it has never been formally written up in the research literature.

What makes it interesting to us is a note from Michael Nave: Chandler seedlings often bear nuts similar to the mother tree. That is not the norm. Most chestnuts are wildly variable from seed, which is the whole reason growers historically reached for grafting. A line that comes reasonably true from seed is worth paying close attention to in an orchard like ours.

It is also genuinely scarce. Across Greg Miller's cooperative breeding program — more than twelve thousand trees in fifteen states — only ten Chandler trees were planted. It is the smallest family in the entire program, tied with one other. Ours are among a very small number growing anywhere.

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