"Despite the repeated setbacks, Graves's enthusiasm for the project never faltered. Year after year, he filed dispatches from the field reporting on another hybrid 'new to science'. He'd describe each in lovingly rich language that reflected his appreciation for nature's stupendously varied palette. The Essate-Jap was 'reddish to Kaiser brown'. The Kelsey had 'burnt sienna bark' and twigs of 'light mineral grey'. The young Hamden's bark was a tint 'somewhere between buckthorn brown and Dresden brown'.

"'He never had a shadow of a doubt about the fact that he was going to bring back the chestnut,' recalled Richard Jayes . . ."

pages 99-100 of American Chestnut by Susan Freinkel