← chestnut
freely propagated
Peach
Castanea mollissima
The record
- Parentage
- Castanea mollissima
- Origin
- Greg Miller · Carroll County, Ohio · selected from a 1972 planting
- Rights
- freely propagated — Released without a plant patent, keeping it open to growers.
- Nut
- Large and sweet, in spiny burs splitting at maturity in early to mid autumn
- Blight
- Carries the species-wide resistance of C. mollissima
- Pollination
- Needs cross-pollination; plant two or more Chinese chestnut cultivars together
Description
A selection out of a planting of 500 C. mollissima seedlings made in 1972 on a farm in Carroll County, Ohio — the planting Empire Chestnut Company grew from. It was released without a plant patent, which is why it propagates freely and why it turns up in so many later breeding programmes.
It is one parent of the reference Peach × Qing × Kohr seed orchard, so a grower buying ‘Peach’ seedlings is often buying its open-pollinated offspring rather than the clone.