A Southern Luther Burbank They said “it couldn’t be done”. But Bob Dunstan did it. Not once, but twice. And then again - did what in plant breeding “can’t be done”: Hybridizing two different grape species, and later bringing back from the dead the vanished American chestnut tree. They said it couldn’t be done. But Bob Dunstan did it. And they began to call him a “Southern Luther Burbank.” He successfully crossed the sturdy native American Muscadine (Muscadinia rotundifolia) with the fancy elite European table “bunch” grape (Vitis vinifera) - to create the basis for a whole new burgeoning grape agribusiness in Florida, his adopted state. He resurrected from the grave the long dead American chestnut, selectively breeding a completely blight-free tree, to become the largest US chestnut tree grower and to lay the groundwork for a whole new chestnut growing industry. Not for nothing did they call him a “Southern Luther Burbank.” Nobody would have seemed a more unlikely candidate to inherit the mantle of the fabled California horticulturist. First of all, Dunstan was an “amateur”, in the most Latinate literal sense of the word - a man who played with plants for the sheer love of it, a life-long gardener who did his first hip-pocket planting in a mere two acre back yard. He did not WORK the earth, he ADORNED it. Neighbors laughingly said, “there’s Dr. Dunstan again, down kissin’ the earth.” In the end he both astounded and confounded the high-ranking experts with his “it can’t be done” , “scientifically impossible” results, and won kudos from professional researchers and commercial plant breeders alike. Unlikely candidate? A lifelong academic and intellectual, a brilliant college professor and teach of French, native-fluent in several languages, a courtly ole-fashioned Southern gentleman of the old school, whose friends called him “Marse Bob” (after that paragon of gentility, his namesake Robert E. Lee)? No formal training in horticulture but what he read and learned from scholars and researchers and in his own garden? A plant breeder who had never known anything but ol’ timey Carolina roses and kitchen gardens till he was grown or a chestnut tree until he was in his 40’s? It IS an unlikely story - as unlikely perhaps as that of the two bicycle shop repairmen who flew their world-changing contraption off a sand dune at Kitty Hawk, when Bob Dunstan was three years old, only a stone’s throw from Bob’s family’s beach house. It is pure coincidence (as most inventions are), past sheer luck, past the inventor’s deep wild hunches of “things that aren’t but CAN BE.” It is past vision and the dogged persistence to keep on trying --- It began a long time ago. Bob Dunstan was born in 1901, the fourth son of a Civil War surgeon in Windsor, NC, a tiny east Carolina village with few possibilities for a bright kid beyond reading or hunting and fishing the swamps, sounds, and rivers in a cypress dugout canoe. Read he did, and was Valedictorian of his little high school class. ( I still have his handwritten valedictory speech in the neat Spencerian script everyone in those days had to learn.) To pay his tuition at Old Trinity College (later known as Duke University, but this was still before the tobacco millions poured into it) in Durham, a training ground for Methodist Ministers, he trapped, tanned, and sold thousands of swamp animal pelts, much in demand then - deer, beaver, muskrat, even mink. In college he was discovered to have a brilliant talent for foreign languages. He spoke without any trace of accent, the way an “opera diva” with perfect pitch sings - and was encouraged to seek a PH.D. in Romance Languages at the University of Wisconsin. There, he adored ice and snow sports, went bald at 23, married, and even gave sermons in Italian to local churches and was asked to preach at black churches! In 1927, at age 26, he became the youngest department head, the baldest and most popular teacher, at Greensboro College, a liberal arts Methodist girls college, where he stayed, still the baldest and most popular teacher, for 36 years. At home, for fun, he spoke French with his wife, Katherine, an artist, and two little girls. But a green destiny was stirring in his blood. In 1929 he bought two country acres, and in the hereditary Southern tradition of “land is the only thing that lasts”, he began to grow things. He grew wonderful fresh things to eat (by now it was Deep Depression and salaries were cut in half) - tomatoes as big as cantaloupes, a “greens” he accidentally created between collards and kale. And besides the white sweet potatoes and other staples, exotic fruits like black, white, red and yellow raspberries side by side, white dewberries from Burbank’s experiments, rare peaches and apples, white cherries (nobody in this neck of Carolina had even seen such things!) and great spreading arbors of the fragrant old muscadines and scuppernongs of his childhood, where friends and neighbors gathered on late summer days. The old Memory muscadine arbor was 40 feet square. Here pure chance threw the dice. A friend of a friend from Duke, an economist whose hobby was antique roses, asked Dr. Dunstan, already beginning to be known as a horticulturist, to “baby sit” his prize roses for him for a year while he went to France for a year’s study. Bob Dunstan happily dug up the Durham roses and nursed them for a year in his own backyard garden. As a thank-you gift when he returned from his year abroad, in 1938 the friend brought Dr. Dunstan, his rose “nursemaid”, a package of 30 rare hybrids of the most elegant of the French table grapes he had tasted there. For over 100 years grape breeders had been unsuccessfully tying to cross euvitis and rotundifolia. In this country there were only a few of the French Hybrids available. Dunstan notified research stations and private vineyards that he would share his rare collection, including Seibel and Seyve-Villard selections and including 20 viniferas (White Muscat of Alexandria, Golden Muscat, among others). Thus began decades of enthusiastic and detailed correspondence and plant sharing with dozens of researchers, breeders, growers, and hobbyists like himself, including Philip Wagner (Maryland’s Boordy Vineyards), Dr. H. P. Olmo (U.C. Davis), B.O. Fry in Georgia, and Robert Zehnder in S.C., and many others who soon came to visit and see for themselves the many newly propagated vines. Thus began the legend of “it couldn’t be done” grape breeding. Recalling his earlier role-model, Luther Burbank, Bob Dunstan, in his little back yard seedling plots, began to dust pollen from one species to another to see if he could improve the few table grape varieties available in the Southeastern U.S. (He laughingly called it “pimping” his grapes.) And surprise! Among the hundreds of little plants that weren’t supposed to breed together - they bred! He had succeeded in backcrossing an F1 hybrid known as “NC 6-15” with euvitis! The resulting seedling, “DRX- 55.” was also fertile, making possible a second backcrossing. Problems with Pierce’s disease led Dunstan to experiment with colchicine to induce fertile hybrids in the tetraploidal varieties. He called some of the sumptuous new crosses “Carolina Black Rose,” “Aurelia”, and “Rojote”, and D-211 - feasts for the eye as well as the palate. (Ed. note - Carolina Black Rose, Aurelia and D-211 were actually hybrids between vinifera and some of the French Hybrids. Only Rojote had muscadine in it’s parentage.) At the same time, he was crossing pecan and native hickory trees; he produced a “he-can” tree with viable, delicious, heavy bearing nuts. On one tree, with a hammock slung under it, he grafted 39 different varieties of nuts - a neighborhood “seventh wonder of the world.” Naturally, he became one of the early members of the Northern Nut Growers Association (there was not yet a Southern branch), whose members were his frequent correspondents and visitors the rest of his life. Soon professional and hobby growers all over the South and East began to flock to Bob Dunstan’s North Carolina backyard plots to see for themselves. Still, the experts insisted, “It can’t be done. It’s a fluke.” Again the long arm of coincidence intervened. On the way to national grape research meetings at Cornell, Dunstan met and became instant friends with Dr. Haig Dermen, a USDA cytologist from Beltsville, MD. My father said their instant rapport took place because as a linguist he knew how to pronounce Dr. Dermen’s name correctly - not to rhyme with “vermin” as his colleagues did, but in harmony with his near Eastern origin, “Dare-MEN.” It was Dr. Dermen’s cytological research which proved beyond any shadow of doubt the scientific validity of his successful cross. Significantly, it proved it possible to pursue the work of breeding at the diploid level by using conventional techniques of recombination and selection - to breed new varieties of grapes to possess the best qualities of both the euvitis and the muscadines, to adapt to the Southeast’s growing conditions. Dunstan’s seminal work began to be published internationally as well as by the Journal of Heredity here in the U.S. The French equivalent, Bulletin de L’O.I.V. asked him to submit his first article - which he wrote in French, of course! Newspapers and other journals picked up his story - even Wine East, for instance. The experts finally had to eat not only their words, but his luscious new fruits as well. A steady stream of visitors kept coming to the Greensboro vineyards. His friends addressed him as “Dear Grape-Nut”. Bob Dunstan’s daughter Aurelia - for whom the new grape was named - had married Dr. Alvin Wallace in 1945 - the first statistical plant genetics PH.D. from NC State College. The two began a lifelong intellectual and scientific exchange - a “family” relationship with a theoretical plant breeder who could coach him in all the complex science of what he was already on a practical basis performing. When the Wallaces moved to Florida in 1950, another whole new chapter in Dunstan’s plant breeding career ensued. In between times, Bob and Katherine took of the study of Russian, just for fun! For the third time, Lady Luck stuck her nose in. One of Dunstan’s nut grower friends, James Carpenter, on a hunting trip in Ohio, in the deep woods stumbled upon, in a forest of dead trees, one huge LIVE healthy chestnut tree. Remember, American chestnut trees, all 3.5 billion of them - had been totally wiped out in this country ban accidentally introduced blight brought into New York harbor in 1904. By 1940 millions of acres of this economically important food, farm, and lumber staple were dead and gone, the largest botanical catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet here, one sturdy sample had survived. Carpenter quickly sent cuttings to his already well-known amateur breeding buddy, Bob Dunstan. There began the next “it can’t be done” tale. In his hip-pocket seed beds, Dunstan began to cross and backcross the new chestnut, cross pollinating with a resistant Chinese chestnut and grafting to Chinese stock. In the early 1960’s the Dunstans, now retired from teaching, followed the Wallaces to Florida, to a picturesque 90 acre hillside farm near Alachua. Dunstan brought along the F2 six-year old chestnut trees and had USDA experts inoculate them with the chestnut blight fungus to test their immunity. Not one tree showed any trace of susceptibility. Forty years later they are still immune.\ He had literally brought back these trees from the dead. Thus he set the stage for the renaissance of the chestnut-growing agri-industry, which continues to expand exponentially all over the country. Aptly, the new varieties were named “Dunstan” and “Renaissance,” the only patents ever given to a chestnut. At the same time, he began his Florida grape breeding program, which was to attract experts, growers, and correspondents from all over the world to see and taste, and share, literally, the fruits of his labors. Dunstan gave cuttings and nuts freely to anyone who was interested - a true amateur, in the best sense of the word. And again, is it Lady Luck again or the horticulturalists vision? A Japanese graduate student in genetics, whose major professor was the son-in-law Al Wallace, was so fond of his mentor and teacher that when the student returned to Japan, he sent Wallace a large shipment of persimmon trees, more than 30 luscious varieties not previously grown in that area of Florida. The two “family” plant breeders grafted some of these to native wild persimmon root stock, and in a few short years the green hills of Chestnut Hill Farm were blanketed with the bejewelled-orange (Kaki) persimmon trees. Aurelia recalls when “every flat surface in the entire house and barn was covered with carpets of orange, ripening persimmons.” In the 1970’s as the grape breeding continued, Pierce’s disease took a heavy toll on the North Carolina-bred cultivars, which also suffered from the hot wet - not dry - summers. The muscadines and scuppernongs, however, flourished and produced the basis for the “Fry” variety, the budding Florida wine industry, and the pick-it-yourself vineyard business. In addition, Dunstan collected and propagated many unusual “first” fruits and plants in this fertile black soil - the “Anna” apple from Israel (‘you can’t grow apples in Florida” - where had he heard this nay-saying before?) cold-hardy citrus, figs, jujubes (an Oriental fruit like date not grown here before), peaches, (before adapted varieties were developed by Florida breeders) even odd papayas. His new chestnut trees were now tested by growers all over the United States, all found to be resoundingly blight resistant and a great business crop. He was, obviously, a founding member of NAFEX, the North American Fruit Explorers. Then in 1991, Al Wallace died of cancer. Bob Dunstan’s only grandson and namesake Robert Dunstan Wallace, spurred into a biology degree at the University of Florida by growing up with his enthusiastic, creative grandfather and father, moved to the Dunstan Farm in 1971. He and his wife Deborah established “Chestnut Hill Farm” to propagate the “Dunstan” chestnut to growers nationwide - and to receive the only plant patent every granted to chestnuts in the USA. By 1985 Chestnut Hill had also begun to propagate and ship a wide variety of fruits from the grandfather’s collection, especially persimmons. In 1987, at the very height of his fame, influence, and productivity, visited by experts from all over the world, including the ones who had said “it couldn’t be done” - Bob Dunstan, too, died of cancer, July 16, 1987. * * * By 1990, Chestnut Hill had become the largest grower of chestnut and persimmons trees in the US, selling to commercial growers. Both crops have proven profitable orchard crops in the US alone. By 1995, Chestnut Hill, still under the continuing benevolent “green” spirit of Bob Dunstan guiding his grandson, was expanding production into all kings of fruit trees and berries, especially University of Florida and Dunstan varieties selected for low-chill environments. “CHN” as we call it, has doubled in acreage: It supplies Home Depot, Walmart, and Lowe’s with an ever expanding menu of fruit trees, berries, and ornamental trees. Thus it has become one of the largest fruit-tree producing nurseries in Florida and in the Southeast. Florida’s Governor Lawton Chiles was impressed enough to invite Bob Wallace to plant a chestnut tree at the Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee and to order 200 more for his own farm. In 1998 and again in 1999, Florida Business named Chestnut Hill Nursery and Orchards as “one of the 100 fastest-growing businesses in Florida.” Bob Wallace, grandson of the backyard gardener who changed the face of horticulture in the Southeast, whose challenge from the experts was “It can’t be done” thus becomes the third generation to meet that challenge with faith, energy, vision, and know-how - a combination of fortuitous circumstances, guts, perseverance, and the visionary hunches that led his grandfather into plant breeding worlds no one had ever before dreamed of. So the next time you hear, “It can’t be done!”, think of Bob Dunstan. No wonder they called him a “Southern Luther Burbank”! Aurelia Dunstan Wallace 2381 NW 18 Pl. Gainesville, FL. 3260