Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

W. C. REED: Our plans for Saturday morning are that we are leaving Evansville at 7:30, arriving in Vincennes at 9:30; several automobiles will be in waiting there to take all the party out to the nurseries and get back to the station for the 2 o'clock train going north to Oaktown, where there will be automobiles in waiting to take us out to see the original Busseron and Indiana trees, coming back to Oaktown in time for the 6:40 train south, arriving in Vincennes at 7:07, or the train north out of Oaktown to Terre Haute, to connect for Pittsburgh over the Pennsylvania Lines or Big Four if anyone wants to go that way. We would like to have everyone go with us Saturday, if possible, and would also like to know sometime this afternoon before we adjourn how many are going, so I can notify them tonight how many automobiles there will be needed at each point.

THE PRESIDENT: That is rather an important visit for the members to make for two or three reasons. Those of you who haven't had the opportunity of seeing the pecan propagated in Mr. McCoy's nursery will get a chance to see Mr. Reed's nursery; and you will get to see the parent trees of two good northern Varieties. We know very much depends on the location of the original parent tree, notwithstanding it is sometimes said it is the location of the nursery that determines the hardiness. We know that has nothing to do with it. You cannot, by putting a tree in a nursery for six months, change its nature. If you take this trip Saturday, you will have a chance to see the Busseron and the Indiana.

MR. REED: We will also visit the Niblack tree if we have time.

THE PRESIDENT: I would suggest that all go who can. I want also to urge all of you to make the trip tomorrow and see the big seedling pecan trees bearing nuts hanging almost to the ground. You cannot always see that because usually they are so tall. I also want to call your attention to the exhibits in the other room. Mr. Wilkinson has a very fine collection in there. Col. Sober has some very fine exhibits of chestnuts, both of burrs and nuts, and Mr. W. C. Reed has a very fine collection and possibly there are many others I should mention. You ought to examine all of them, because the only way of drawing correct conclusions about these things comes from careful study, and it cannot be done hastily. The next on the program this afternoon will be Mr. McCoy's talk.

MR. MCCOY: I have no set speech to make I thought maybe there were some things I might say to be a help to some of you; some things that would have been lots of help to me a year or two ago from some one, because nut trees are more difficult than any other nursery stock to propagate, and for another reason it is more difficult in the North than in the South. Mr. Paul White and Mr. Ford Wilkinson have both worked in the North and in the South, and after coming back home these boys say that anybody can propagate pecans in the South, but with us it is different. We have kept at it, though, and our president has been our good friend and has always helped us out. There have been three of us incessantly at the work. Mr. Littlepage would come down home and get us together and ginger us up, and we would go back and go to work and try again. It has been one continuous line of failures, but every year we have learned some things, or at least learned how not to do it. This spring we were fortunate in having an expert from the South who came to my nursery and stayed there until midsummer, and we saw our own work compared with his. We all had great respect for him and he is able, too. I don't think he had much respect for us when he got here but he had a whole lot when he went away for he made a miserable failure like the rest of us. Mr. Jones, you know, is an authority on grafting. He is the man that introduced it to the nut world, at least in the East. I think it had been tried in California before. We have tried his methods and everything else that government experts or any other expert told us about, and we have read all the magazines that were published from the South to the North. Everything seemed to be a failure and finally I got disgusted and said "We will do it to suit ourselves." After we had tried all the hard ways in Christendom I think we have at last found an easy way to do it. Like everything else it is easy when you know how. I believe it is a fact--and I am saying nothing but what I believe--I don't believe you will ever successfully graft pecan trees in the North, unless you equalize your sap flow by pruning your roots. I tried it and failed. It is possible you may be able to side graft under most favorable conditions. You may make a side graft take if you leave the top on to take care of the extra sap flow. You take off the top of a pecan tree, or any other nut tree in this country, and you ruin your root system because your sap comes with such vengeance--and it comes! One day there is no show of sap and the next day it comes with vengeance. Differences in the soil, of course, makes some difference. At Mr. Littlepage's place, Paul had the sap a week before I did and Mr. Wilkinson had it four days before. A great many of our top works are going to the bad because we ruined the root system when we cut the tree. And I want to say it again, I don't believe we can make a success of it in the North. You may do it in Oregon where you have a distributed sap flow. The Oregon fellows say you can't bud, because they don't know how. They say the only way you can produce trees is to graft. That may be true out there but you can't graft in Indiana, I know, especially on my place. Of course the soil of each particular farm has something to do with it. To illustrate my point, the first year I was in the state of Wisconsin, on the 20th of June, I was out in the country and saw a man setting tobacco. I knew him and I said, "Won't that tobacco get frost bit?" and he said, "I reckon not. It might but it never did." I thought it would, but I went that way in two weeks again and I changed my mind. I had been used to seeing tobacco growing in the Ohio valley where it does its growing in the latter part of the season. In the South the sap flow is much better distributed than it is in the North.

Now, then, I have brought a board along with these young trees stuck in it, because I thought some of the members would like to see a demonstration. The tools I have here are not adequate, hardly, for the job. For a tree that size we take a saw to it.

(Here Mr. McCoy makes a demonstration of cleft grafting.)

MR. POTTER: Would you have a scion as long as that in actual work?

MR. MCCOY: Many of them are, but it would be better smaller, probably. That is a matter I don't think there is much to, whether the scion has one bud or ten. I think three is perhaps about right.

MR. POTTER: They come together right there?

MR. MCCOY: Exactly on the front side. Now you understand this grafting is done when the sap is flowing, or about the time the sap flow begins. Usually at our latitude here you will commence grafting anywhere from the 6th of April to about that time in May. Of course when you are cutting trees at that time you have got an immense flow of sap. Mr. Jones tried this method without drainage, that is the way they do out in Louisiana, but he only got ten per cent to stick, so we had to work out a drainage for ourselves. Take a piece of heavy wrapping paper, rather good quality such as you can get at any paper store, and put it right over your graft, and a little bit below the cut on your stock. Then simply take a piece of raffia and wrap. Then make the ordinary tie that anyone knows how to make with the cotton or twine, or sometimes with the raffia, and you have the drainage of this paper. The tie, of course, is simply to re-enforce the strain on the graft and hold it. Then you apply the grafting wax. The one we use is three of resin, one of beeswax, and lampblack and a little bit of linseed oil. Cover up the graft entirely, except don't cover over the lower end of this paper because there is the drainage where the sap flows out. Then you put an ordinary paper sack right over it, and leave it on for about three weeks.

A MEMBER: You don't tie the paper below the raffia?

MR. MCCOY: That does not make any difference.

A MEMBER: At what time do you cut a hole in the bag to give it air, or do you do that?

MR. MCCOY: Not for two or three weeks.

(Mr. McCoy now gives a demonstration in budding.)

We will suppose this is a seedling and I want to bud it. I place my budder on like that. Now I have got my shield up. Now I lay my budder on the stock something like that.

MR. SMITH: Why not wrap over the bud?

Mr. MCCOY: Because it will injure it. It is essential to cover all the cut surface you can. Make it waterproof at the top, and have it open at the bottom.

MR. POTTER: How long does that stay on the bud?

MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference unless you want to force the bud.

MR. MCELDERRY: When do you take that off?

MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference. I have thousands of them that have been on five or six weeks. I take it off when action begins. It varies, it may be two weeks and it may be six and it might be six months. If you have maximum budding conditions generally the tree itself will tell the story. We frequently take it off and have to rewrap.

MR. W. C. REED: Would ten days be too quick?

MR. MCCOY: In most cases, yes.

MR. REED: Fruit trees is two weeks, but pecan trees are not quite as quick?

MR. MCCOY: Pecan trees will come through the rye about as quick as a peach tree.

MR. REED: I am talking about cherry trees.

MR. MCCOY: I think about twenty or twenty-five days is about right. You know as well as I do that cases are not all alike, and you have to know when to unwrap.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: How can you tell this if the bud is covered up?

MR. MCCOY: You can tell easy enough if the bud is alive, just like anything else.

MR. MOSELY: You say you can't graft pecan trees here?

MR. MCCOY: I don't think so.

MR. WEBBER: What do you graft?

MR. POTTER: And what will you do about the nut trees?

MR. MCCOY: I will bud.

MR. WEBBER: What value is the grafting to us?

MR. MCCOY: You may be able to graft.

MR. W. C. REED: We _can_ graft.

MR. MCCOY: Maybe you can, but I can't.

I don't think root grafting is a success, although we have some fine trees that are root grafted. I don't know what it is but there is something wrong; some of them are all right, to be sure but I don't find it a general success. Of the two methods, grafting and budding, I will bud.

MR. HARGIS: Mr. McCoy, I have a number of seedling pecan trees in good healthy condition and I want to transform them into good bearing trees. What shall I do?

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Littlepage will cover that.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know about that, whether I can or not, but that will come later. There is one thing that ought to be covered, or demonstrated here, and that is the method of working the hickory and the pecan by the slip bark method. I think the slip bark method in the hickory and pecan is a method that everybody ought to know, and also this ought to be used with the walnut tree. Some of the walnuts ought to be top worked to English walnuts in the North. And it's the same way with the hickory through this section. There are thousands and tens of thousands that ought to be top worked to fine shagbarks, and I am going to call on Mr. White who is the most successful man in this topwork method I have ever seen. I top worked twenty-six this spring, and got twenty-three to grow; he did twenty-two and made twenty-one grow, so that record beats mine. I will say also to those of you who are interested, get a copy of Mr. Olcott's _Nut Journal_ and you will see a lot of good cuts showing the results of top working. To those of you who do not know Mr. White I will say that he is associated with me in some tree work and I think he is perhaps one of the most successful top workers I have ever seen. Paul, you will now give us your demonstration.

(Paul White now gives demonstration of top working.)

MR. RIEHL: I would like to say a few things right here, I don't want to be thought altogether idle. I live in Illinois, your neighboring state. I have learned lots of good things here and I want to give a little. I have been experimenting in the nut business for some time; I have studied propagation and there is one point I think will be new to you. I had difficulty in propagating hickories and pecans until I got the thought of hermetically sealing the scion. I first used gum shellac, but later I found that by covering the scion with grafting wax completely it serves the same purpose as the paper. It takes the place of all that wrapping, except right at the wound, and does away with the sacks. I have tried them and I much prefer covering with grafting wax. Your buds will come right through the wax, and you don't have to bother about taking off the sacks, and there is no danger of leaving the sacks on too long.

THE PRESIDENT: That is a very good suggestion, Mr. Riehl. There might be some discussion of that. It occurs to me that with that method it is very essential you have the right kind of grafting wax, otherwise it might injure your bark. Are there any suggestions or questions before we finish the grafting demonstration?

MR. RIEHL: I wish to emphasize the fact that the wax must not be too hot.

THE PRESIDENT: What is your formula, Mr. Riehl?

MR. RIEHL: Four of resin, two of beeswax and one of linseed oil.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions?

MR. DORR: Suppose I wanted to get a certain variety of tree by grafting. For instance if I couldn't buy the white Heath Cling peach then my only resource would be to bud on another tree. But suppose I struck a nursery where I could get good seedlings of this tree. Wouldn't a natural tree be preferable to the budded one?

THE PRESIDENT: There are no true seedlings, so far as I know.

MR. DORR: Do you mean there are none at all true to seed?

THE PRESIDENT: No, nut trees do not come true to variety. In other words, Mr. Dorr, I might put it this way. In the big Green River orchard over here there are some of the very best pecan trees, but those of us who have been observing them for years have found it is only through propagation we can get a Green River and a Major. It would be a failure to get the nuts and plant them and hope to get the varieties that exist there, just as it would to plant some nut that grows a hundred miles away, because the pollen up and down the river would mix in these varieties. It is the same way with the walnut, when you undertake to plant an English walnut and get it true to the seed, you are going to have a failure. If you plant a Rush walnut you may get a nut that resembles it but there is no probability of its being a true Rush walnut. That is why we have these discussions of budding and grafting. We should be glad if seedlings would come true but they do not. I will show you tomorrow, at Enterprise, the great variety of seedling pecans, and I want you to look them over well.

PROFESSOR SMITH: May I answer his question? I think he asked, which is better the tree from the nursery, the natural tree, or a grafted tree?

THE PRESIDENT: If he did, I didn't understand.

PROFESSOR SMITH: That was the question, and I will say he can't find a Heath Cling, unless it is top worked.

MR. DORR: Some farmers who have tried a great many experiments hold to this theory: If you select the seed properly you can produce fruit as good as the nurseries produce it. The things the schools teach don't coincide with what those practical farmers observe.

PROFESSOR SMITH: When you try to find farmers more practical than these men here, you have got some to find.

THE PRESIDENT: The farmer who says he can do that is mistaken.

MR. DORR: He says the same thing about you. When I buy a grafted tree a storm comes along and breaks it where it was grafted. If I can get a perfect seedling I will have a stronger tree.

MR. MCELDERRY: The very thing he is inquiring about has cost Posey County thousands of dollars. Men tell them they have trees that are better than the nurserymen sell and they bite and find they are mistaken. But they get them and pay from ten to fifteen cents more than they would to the dealer. There is no man on earth that can keep the Heath Cling true in that way, or any other variety on earth.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: I want to say a word. Two or three people have made the statement here that it is absolutely impossible to propagate any peach or other fruit true from seed. We have been doing it for years. I believe the orchard peach will come true to the seed. With apples there are groups that will come true to the group but not the variety.

THE PRESIDENT: I am glad to hear that statement. I have understood that the Indian peach will come true to that group but it will not be the big Indian peach you have planted. It is a fact that some of those groups have a tendency to come true to the group.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: Yes, they come true to the group and so will apples.

MR. DORR: May I ask another question? What has become of some of those beautiful, delicious seedlings in southern Indiana they had when I was a boy?

THE PRESIDENT: The same thing that became of Washington and Lincoln--they died.

MR. MCELDERRY: It is a boy's taste, not the peach, that makes it seem better than the ones we have now.

MR. W. C. REED: I feel that Mr. McCoy discouraged us too much about grafting. I think either method he used will succeed very well. The main point is the time of the year it is done. Up to a year ago we began grafting a few days after the first of April, and continued up to the first of May, and our success varied from ninety per cent to nothing. We decided there was too much sap and went to budding. The last grafting we did gave us the only real good stand we got, that which we did from the first to the tenth of May. We had as good results then as we did in budding.

THE PRESIDENT: That is good, Mr. Reed. I think those facts ought to be brought out and made a matter of a record.

MR. REED: I think it is more the time in grafting than anything else.

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Reed has a clay soil and that does not furnish the rapid flow of sap that a warm sandy soil does.

MR. REED: You would have to begin grafting earlier.

MR. MCCOY: Yes sir.

MR. WHITE: Do you leave that cover of paper on when you coves it with wax?

MR. REED: On part of them we did and on part of them we did not. In grafting walnut trees this season we left some of it on.

MR. WOODS: Just a question as to the strength of that slip grafting. Will it blow off easily?

MR. WHITE: The first year it will blow off a little bit easily. The first year you will have to tie it.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further suggestions? If not the next thing on the program will be a talk by Dr. J. Russell Smith of the University of Pennsylvania.

PROFESSOR SMITH: Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: We have to educate the public--my good friend down by the window, I hope he will not take my remarks personally--is a case in point. He has come in with an argument, which the gentlemen next him says has cost his county lots of money. I am a grower of apples, an experimenter in nuts and I raise peaches to eat. I am planting seedling peaches and I know that when I go on that hillside of mine I can get little red seedling peaches and plant them and get the same kind, which have, I think, as much sugar and flavor as any big peach two inches or two and a half in diameter. I raise them true to the type too, but I would not think of putting out a commercial orchard of seedling peaches. My neighbor tried it, to his financial sorrow.

But it is surprising how this seedling error sticks. People are going to be buying seedling trees twenty-five years hence and thinking they are getting the best to be had. Here is an article that bears me out. Here is an editor who has published a very glaring thing. This is No. 139, Vol. 113 of a paper devoted primarily to ginseng. This question was asked: "What do you know about the Pomeroy English walnut trees and fruit?" and the editor answers: "The Pomeroy walnut trees are all right and you will find at least nineteen out of twenty hardy. That is what I find here and we often get it down to 20 below zero. The nuts are of good quality. Beware of the Pomeroy trees offered by the Rochester nurserymen. These are grafted trees. Pomeroy raises his trees on their own roots, all of them are true seedlings, and that is why once in a great while one turns out tender."

President of the Northern Nut Growers Association]

MR. DORR: I believe I am as old as you are and have gone the same gait exactly. I lost my job and went to farming. I was once a college professor, too, but there are things I find now I didn't find then. Two nurserymen come to me and sell me two Grimes Golden apples. I plant them side by side and they do not turn out alike. Why not if they are grafted trees? I am not knocking, you misunderstand me, I am a truth seeker.

PROFESSOR SMITH: I believe that. We always find something we didn't buy. My head man says they jump in. I have some very fine specimens that came by accident, and of course we have a certain amount of bud variation. We find variety even by propagation. The trees will vary the same as people will but they will vary a great deal more if we get the seedlings. The successful growth of nuts, as of any other fruit, demands the use of top worked trees from the best known parentage. That is the way we do with apples, peaches, pears, and cherries. Nuts will have to come in the same class from the best known parentage. The big thing today is to find out the best known parentage and then spread knowledge so that no editor will be capable of fooling people as in the article I read a few minutes ago.

That is point number one. My point number two is a different one. It is the question of the names of the varieties of northern nut trees, particularly the names of the pecan trees. Twenty years from now there will be a million people in the North who will gravely tell us the pecan grows down South, not in Indiana, and that you can't grow them up here. I haven't a doubt there will be a million people that will believe that twenty years hence. How can we get that idea out of their heads? I think we have an agency in the mere names of the trees which will cause people to buy more, yes a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand more trees, than they do at the present time. If we pick out one name, Indiana, what does it mean? It will make a man ask questions, and if he has any curiosity at all he will want to know if it grows in Indiana and if it will grow in any state with practically the same latitude as Indiana. But if he hears the name Schley, what does it mean? Nothing, because practically everybody has quit thinking about Admiral Schley. I recall eight varieties of northern pecans three of which have good names and three perfectly worthless ones. Indiana, Kentucky and Green River are the good ones. Green River is the least valuable because it is not well enough known. Indiana and Kentucky are great names because they are the names of great states. Then we have Busseron, Warrick, Posey and Buttrick. The Busseron nut which grows up at Vincennes ought to be renamed Vincennes. There will be thousands more sold in Vincennes when it is known from the name that it did not originate in Pennsylvania but that it is a product of Vincennes. My point is this, it gets a name that shows it to be a northern product. I am not going to fight for that particular name but it is growing at Vincennes and that is a perfectly good reason for it to be named after that well known city. Now we come to the Posey. It grows on the banks of the Wabash and ought to be named the Wabash. Nobody knows anything about Posey County and what the reason is for the name, but the banks of the Wabash where it grows have been made famous in song. We can hook a sign on that pecan that will sell twenty or thirty thousand more Poseys than are sold now. Next we have the Buttrick which is found growing in Illinois. That is the reason why those Buttrick pecans will sell under the name of Illinois. It is named for a man but it doesn't mean anything in the world but women's dress patterns and is not a good name for a pecan.

MR. MCCOY: A change in a name like Buttrick to Illinois is a good one. Any name like this that tells by itself the fact that the nut is from the North is worth a lot to the people who want to sell pecan trees, and to the people who want to eat pecans, and can buy them reasonably. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I move that a special committee be appointed to consider changing the names of these pecans and giving them names showing that they are northern nuts.

MR. POTTER: I second that motion.

THE PRESIDENT: It has been moved and seconded that a committee be appointed to consider the matter of changing the names of some of the pecans.

A MEMBER: Isn't there a Vincennes in Europe?

THE PRESIDENT: There might possibly be more suggestions, and we should be glad to hear from anyone along this line.

MR. REED: I agree with Professor Smith in part of his remarks. We have a walnut called the Ontario from Greene County, Michigan. If we should call it Michigan that would indicate where it came from. But it is widely known now as the Ontario, and would it be best to change its name, even though it comes from Michigan?

MR. MCCOY: Wouldn't it have been better to have called it Michigan to start with?

MR. REED: I think so.

MR. MCCOY: We have pursued these things for many years and we have made some misnomers in naming them. I think it's a good idea to change them.

MR. POTTER: I am very much pleased with the idea Professor Smith has advanced for renaming these trees. They don't mean anything now as he says, and I think it would be a great forward stride for this association to rename these trees.

MR. SIMPSON: I think Professor Smith's idea is a move in the right direction. We were the first people that propagated any of these northern varieties, and my idea is to call that variety Indiana, for the very reason he mentions here, that it distinguishes it as a northern variety. I think his suggestion ought to be followed out as far as it is possible. At least with several varieties.

THE PRESIDENT: The chair takes the opportunity of saying that the suggestion meets his most hearty approval. I have taken up pages of letters in writing to people about nuts, and explaining to them that the nursery from which they bought had nothing to do with the hardiness of the tree, that it was the location of the parent tree that determined this. I was struck by an advertisement last year which said, "buy them from the nursery furthest north." That hasn't a thing in the world to do with it. You may take some of this very wood we have here and propagate it on the McKenzie River, or the Yukon, and say you are selling trees propagated in Alaska, but the hardiness all depends on where the parent tree is. These parent trees have been placed there by nature, and when we distribute them we will distribute what nature has put into the parent tree. These trees are there because they have withstood all the climatic conditions, and nothing would be of more value, it appears to me, than to adopt the suggestion for renaming them. In the first place many of these trees are named for men not entitled to have them named for them. Many of those who own these trees do not know their value and object to anyone that knows anything about a nut tree going in and getting bud wood, and are contrary and mean about it. It is very rare that the importance of these seedling pecans is known to their owners, and they are not entitled to any consideration themselves. They are generally discovered by some outsider who had to beg to go in and get a stick of bud wood. Is there any further discussion?

MR. C. A. REED: You are right about that. But I would like to go on record in opposition to this movement. When pecans are recorded in the standard works the names stay. The rule is generally accepted that where the names have once been recorded no other name can be permitted. It is easy enough for us to vote to change a name but not so easy to change it in actual practice. How many of us will know these pecans that Prof. Smith has mentioned by any other names than those that have already been accepted. Suppose we do rename them, we shall have to explain that they are the old pecans under the new names.

MR. MCCOY: We remember well when we changed the name of the Green River. We decided that among ourselves here. The Posey pecan used to be the Grayville and you know when we changed it. I call it the Grayville yet because I got used to that. You changed it to Posey thinking it was from Posey County but it really is from Gibson County. I have no doubt many of these men here call it the Grayville, and then lots of men that hear me call it the Grayville ask me what I mean as they don't recognize it under the old name. I am in favor of changing these names. I named some of them and you know it, but I didn't always name them right and you have changed them here. Can't we do it again if it will sell them?

THE SECRETARY: What is the motion exactly?

THE PRESIDENT: As I understood it was to appoint a special committee to take up the matter, and consider changing these names.

THE SECRETARY: Why should we do that when we have already a committee on nomenclature? What is the use of a special committee?

MR. POTTER: The special committee will report quicker.

THE PRESIDENT: If it belongs to the committee on nomenclature to consider the matter it will be best to do it now, immediately. If the names are to be changed they ought not go another year, and if not to be changed it ought to be known. The chair will be glad to entertain a motion that the committee report tomorrow on it.

MR. POTTER: I make a motion that the matter be referred to the committee on nomenclature and that they be ordered to report tomorrow.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I hear a second?

A MEMBER: I second the motion.